JANUARY IN YOUR GARDEN
By Clodagh and Dick Handscombe
Another gardening year is with us and probably another tough one economically so it makes sense to focus your gardening new year resolutions on achieving beautiful and productive gardens and apartment terraces with less money than last year.
TWELVE INTENTIONS FOR 2011
1. Don’t buy anymore boutique plants just imported for the first time which are often not appropriate for the microclimate of many gardens and are expensive.
2. Don’t lose plants to slugs and snails during damp weather. Buy some Neudorff Ferramol Antilimicos snail/slug killer that is ecological.
3. Propagate as many new plants as possible from prunings cut during the January/February winter cutback.
4. Use water bottles with the tops cut off and newspaper tubes for growing plants from seeds or cuttings rather than buy new plant pots.
5. Plant varieties of fruit trees that ripen early so that what ever the weather you can leave fruit on the trees until they are really ripe.
6. As explained in our four books useful ecological insect and fungi controls can be inexpensively home produced from plants you have in the garden or can find in the countryside.
7. Brighten up the winter garden with containers of pansies and violas whose flowers can be added to salads and very less expensively than by buying them in boxes from greengrocers.
8. Weed your over wintering vegetables regularly so as not to lose any and if not yet growing any build a one or two square metre raised bed or collect some large tree tubs to start to do so on a small scale in early Spring. There are full instructions for growing vegetables on a mini scale in less than one or two square metres in both ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’ and
‘Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style’.
9. Add all weeds and shredded prunings to the compost heap adding some manure and comfrey leaves if you have them to accelerate the process and enrich the compost produced.
10. Clean up and extend strawberry and raspberry beds with runners from last years plants.
11. Review the overall garden while doing the cutback and decide what needs changing before next summer to make it more colourful with less maintenance. Chapter 2.18 of ‘Your garden in Spain’ lists the 25 most time consuming tasks.
12. Avoid repeating the early mistakes made by others when they first arrive in Spain by purchasing one or more of our books which are based on what we have learned over the past twenty five years of gardening in Spain with a flower garden, vegetable and soft fruit allotment and olive grove.
The four books can be obtained from
www.santanabooks.com and Amazon. Also by phoning 952-485838 if you have no internet. They are published by Santana Books.
© Clodagh and Dick Handscombe
www.gardeninginspain.com January 2011
