In and Around the Garden

Please note:  What I write in this space are lessons learned through trial and error, research, and from other gardeners and professionals. I garden in zone 9, but share garden experiences that I believe are relevant to most zones within a reasonable time frame and planting conditions.

January 

Maintenance:  If your soil isn’t too wet, remove weeds with roots in tact. 

Control slugs and snails. Clearing away leaf piles, and unused pots and saucers will help eliminate breeding zones. 

Listen to the weather reports for frost, and protect sensitive plants when the temperature drops below 32 degrees.

Clean rain gutters.  

If you’re a seed catalog shopper, start making your selections for February planting.

In the vegetable garden:  Plant bare-root strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, boysenberries, asparagus, artichokes, rhubarb, and horseradish. Plant seedlings of Bok coy, lettuce, spinach, parsley, onion, white potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, chard, cauliflower. Sow seeds of fava beans, lettuce, parsley, mustard, peas, carrots, beets, and radishes. Indoors, sow tomato, pepper, and cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli seeds.

For spring production, fertilize asparagus and rhubarb with cured manure.

Spray fruit trees with dormant spray after the leaves have fallen off, before new buds form. Spray peach trees for Peach-leaf Curl. Also, spray around the ground of tree trunks to kill any hidden spores.

In the landscape:  There’s still time to plant bare-root roses.

January is a good time to shop for evergreen shrubs like camellias, rhododendrons, and azaleas. Plant color spots of violas, pansies, and gladioli corms every three weeks for continuous spring blooms. 

Prune roses, deciduous fruit trees and most other deciduous shrubs. Wait on spring-blooming trees and shrubs after they are done flowering.

Divide overgrown plants such as Canna, Gerberas, mums, ornamental grasses, Shasta daisies, daylilies, yarrows, and more. Copyright © 2010 Dianne Marie Andre