Enjoy planning your new year in the garden

Things to do this week

In the garden: there’s nothing like turning the corner into a new year for making a gardener think about planning and daydreaming about what next season's flowers and vegetables will look like.
In my head it’s always a mass of bright colour and exotic vegetables. Every year is the same, I usually manage the colour, but sometimes the exotic veg isn't so exotic.

Most of my perceived failures are down to a lack of planning or being impetuous by not always providing the best environment for plants. Right plant, wrong place and vice versa.

A neat little trick to multiply colour however, is to take root cuttings from some of your perennials and repot them in spring when roots have established and things are a touch warmer. Delphiniums, phlox, acanthus and perennial poppies are all conducive to this technique.

Dig up the parent plant and wash off all the soil. Find the thickest looking roots you can see and make a cut where they join the rootball. Don’t take more than a quarter of the roots. Once this is done you can replace the parent plant and water back in. Divide the salvaged roots into 10cm lengths remembering which is the top end. Plant them bottom down in a pot of compost just below the surface and keep them in a cold frame or greenhouse. Keep them lightly watered, the only thing that will kill them now is rot from rain or overwatering. Once they've grown their own roots they can have an individual pot to grow in until planting out the following year. This is a great way to increase flower stocks and will cost you virtually nothing.

Any tall grasses can either be cut down at the base or neglected for any wildlife to pick over what’s left of the seedbeds and cut back later. Bearing in mind we have not had any extreme cold weather it might be worth leaving them a while and enjoying the winter interest in the form of the bejewelled frosted tops.

On the plot: pretty soon we will be planting outside under cover and a cold frame is ideal for this. If you don’t have one, it’s worth making one from leftover timber or cobbling together a few old windows and doors. Even rudimentary carpentry skills can do this and I should know.

Keep on protecting brassicas from the hungry pigeons and blackbirds. They seem to work their breaking and entering magic over several weeks when the winds have beaten and battered the netting and it’s easily pulled apart with a robust beak.

Fruit trees will benefit greatly from a heavy dusting of potash and this should increase yields next summer in combination with plenty of rain. Lightly forking around the tree will help incorporate it better and ensure it's watered in.

Have a look at the plot and see what you’ve got left to harvest. Jerusalem artichokes. leeks, celeriac, purple sprouting and parsnips should all be available to harvest. If not, add them to the allotment plan for this year and sow at the right times. It’s that easy.

Draw a plan of veg growing on an old fashioned piece of A4 and make sure there is a crop rotation system to prevent disease and exhausting the soil unnecessarily. I really enjoy researching what unusual veg I'm going to grow and what varieties I might choose. Getting the gardening books out helps the admittedly shorter winter nights to fly by. There are numerous small seed merchants out there who will locate and distribute heirloom varieties of unusual perennial and annual veg as well as provide advice on germination and growing tips.

Although the rain might be vertically hammering down outside at times, hopefully there are bright sunny windows where the garden can dry out and where garden relaxation is properly enjoyed.