Gardening with limited free time need not be such a challenge. Even with minimum effort you will be able to establish a routine that will bring much reward. After all Mother nature does all the work we gardeners merely assist her, our monthly series continues.....

 
January

January is a time to think about sterilising the Greenhouse.

Obtain the smoke sulphur tins from a proprietary supplier.Great care must be taken by the Gardener to ensure that fumes are not inhaled during the process. accordingly ensure that all the vents are closed.If the vents are of the automatic type pick a cold day when they will be firmly in the closed position.

Firstly ensure that you take time to fully read the instructions, use a magnifier if you cannot read the text with ease.

Leave the door wide open for a swift exit and then prepare the sulphur Candle following the manufacturers instructions.Light on a metal tray placed on the ground.

As soon as the candle is lit, leave the Greenhouse promptly.

Do not return inside the Greenhouse for the duration of the time given on the instructions.

It is good practice to either lock the door or at least make a sign and hang on the door handle to warn others that may not be aware they you are fumigating the Greenhouse.

Advise any children of the household to keep away from the Greenhouse during this time.

 
December

Be prepared as Jack frost can show up uninvited.

When he comes at least the benefits of his visit will be welcomed, as long as you are prepared in advance. Rough dig any lands of bare kitchen garden and leave cloddy so the frost can help to reduce pests and diseases. If you have heavy land, stand on short duck boards to keep the soil structure open and prevent panning the subsoil.

Make sure that plants that require protection are brought in or covered, and that the Greenhouse is prepared for heating if required.

Bring the cold frame into the Greenhouse and heat this with an electric mat or small tube heater for example.

Stand it on top of an insulated section of building insulation to save heat .

Top tip- if you are using a new DAB digital radio you can tune into a station which constantly broadcasts uninterrupted birdsong . Sit down with a coffee while you scan over the seed catalogues and relax to the sounds of Spring.

 
November

Any seeds from plants that have been "let go to seed" , need to be collected, labelled and stored.

Incase of any sudden unexpected frosts look after any late crops of salad stuffs with cloches.

Set the mower blades higher for the Winter .

Our milder climate in recent years allows the grass to keep growing in the Winter , and it still needs to be trimmed now and then.

A family of Hedghogs produced four offspring and gave us a memorable moment one torch lit evening in October as we watched them scuttling around as they were boldly moving further from their nest.

The parent Hedgehogs had nibbled off the matured Bluebell straw stalks and scrunched into a nest under the Wisteria stems , reminding us to leave parts of the garden for nature to use.

We hope that the Hedehogs will stay around and provide control of the slugs.

 
October

Pick a dry Autum day and prepare your manure heap for the coming season.

Obtain a load of well rotted cow manure and make a neat heap to allow to further rot down.

Also widely available is bagged horse manure which ia also very valuable to the gardener.

You will be well rewared if you prepare the runner bean trench for next season and make a deep fill of manure .

Select the produce for the Harvest Festival and prepare .

Pick any varieties of Apples that feel ripe.
 
September

September is a busy month for caterpillars too...

The hungry caterpillar ,like the story book will eat your greens faster the the children . If you have not covered with fleece pick off the pests every day if possible.

My Father used to give me a jam jar with a string handle and pay a me a "Tanner" for picking these

 
August

Runner beans will be in full flower,. To ensure maximum fetility spray the flowers in the evenings with water .

Preserve the beans by freezing or try salting down in jars.

August continues here with Beetroot

 
July

Leek seeds sown way back in the winter, will now be filling out in pots . Once the broad beans have finished, cut the fleshy stalks off , compost and leave the roots in the ground for a while to deposit the nitrogen nodules in the soil . Pull or dig out the woody roots in a few days, brush off any nitrogen nodules from the roots into the soil and dispose of the woody root which is hard to compost.

Once the Leek plants are ready decide whether to top and tail or not? Top and tailers like to lay the fingerling ( as we call immature Leek seedlings) in the palm of your hand, close the palm around the leek and twist off the protruding roots and top of the green shoots with the other hand .These plants can then be simply popped into dibber holes and left open, without backfilling. The benefit of growing Leekes is that very little maintainance is required, as nothing really likes to attack or infest them.They take up the precious ground for many months as they are very slow growing, but it will be worth the wait.

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June
It will soon be time to open up the packets of the glorious runner bean seeds. Those magic beans that Jack so relied on will also be one of the most reliable garden plants for us too.
Some will simply wait for early June and plant from seed straight in the soil, other impatient sorts like me like to sow in deep cardboard boxes of compost and plant out in June when the plants will be a foot or so high and all tangled round each other, waiting to be put out and trained around the bean poles. If you use this method of planting out from boxes, pop a seed into the hole when putting the plants out for a sucession of cropping.The beans have a race and normally catch up with each other anyway!
The beans enjoy being kept moist at the roots and the flowers being usually red or white will attract lots of Bumble Bees.
The RHS favoured "White Lady" as one of their varieties that trialed well , so we tried that variety last year and it had all the hallmarks of a well bred sort. I have saved my own seed in previous seasons, and they came back fine.
Be selective and tie a coloured wool around the pods you have chosen to save for seed . When you pick off the broad bean tops to prevent the blackfly, try boiling the leaves into broad bean leaf soup.
 
May
Any lawn is only as good as the weed control you give it. Given time, mother nature will bring in deep rooted "stealth" weeds that crawl under the radar of your lawnmower blades and manage to come into full flower between mowings ....how do they do that? One solution is to invest in a powerful selective cocktail of chemicals that you will buy as a liquid or granular formulation and douse on the lawn not just this year but every year. Alternatively invest in a Daisy Grubber which is one of the simplest tools the Victorians ever invented. My favourite junk shop carries many at around twelve pounds which I think is a good investment. Pick a dry warm day, when the weeds are growing and take each section of the lawn a bit-at-a-time and ease the tap roots out. Not only is the task very rewarding, but the investment of the tool reduces each year you use re-use it, and the chemicals that you would otherwise have used are not harming the soil structure. The Blackbird evensong is so special, and I am glad to think that the worms she finds as she busily runs up and down her lawn are quite organic.
 
April

Seed potatoes come in may interesting varieties to try . Before planting out it is beneficial to conduct the process of leaving the seed potatoes in trays to allow them to sprout, which is called "chitting". Planting methods are endless, I prefer to dig the bed and leave the furrows "proud" in February if soil conditions are dry enough. If there are any frosts the slugs will be reduced prior to planting. Dig in whatever organic material is available, well rotted cow manure is best if available. I normally make a slit with a spade and lever front to back to make a thin trench. Into the trench goes a few pellets of dried organic pelleted fertiliser to give the spuds a good start. When the signs of the leaves start to peep through the soil ridge up and cover them over, which will keep any late frosts from blackening the leaves. The weather in the first week of June often throws a frost at us here in Somerset to keep us on our toes. Stand flower pots over the leaves, or place a sheet of fleece over to keep the frost off.Once the haulms (the green stalks and leaves) or "hams" as we call them have flowered , cropping can commence, if the hams start to die back on the main crop cut them all off and compost them and dig the crop up as and when required.

 

 
April
If you can find an old flat tine potato lifting fork in a junk shop grab it with both hands, and pay the man his twenty pounds quickly, as you will enjoy using it all your life. Not only that but it is very useful for other duties in the garden like dividing herbaceous plants. Use back to back with a digging fork for example and the twenty pounds will be recovered with the "swaps" the divided plants will bring.
 
March
Once you have experienced "Forced" rhubarb, there will have no going back for your taste buds to the naturally grown version. The succulent melt-in-the-mouth moments, coupled with that unique flavour is worth counting down the long March days for. Out of season, rhubarb forcers should be removed from covering the plant to allow the few stalks which have been purposefully left for the plant to recover and left to grow. The forcing pots are usually available in various guises from good Garden Centres and you should buy when you see them in the stores, as they are usually available too late for the season and due to economies of production, only made available once a year by suppliers.

The forcers also make for a great feature piece, and are a constant reminder of the joys to come next year.

 
February

Sow Leek seeds in cloches. They take a full 12 months before harvest so you may still have some in the ground at this stage.

sow Leek seeds very thinly directly into large pots with the compost compressed , only cover over with silver sand. The light penetrates through the sand and activates germination when the temperature and light levels are correct. The seeds know when to pop up, and will do only when they are ready and not before so do be patient.