Sort out that shed! Gardening tips for January

Happy New Year!  Are you starting 2025 bursting with good intentions for your garden?  So am I!  Things are pretty quiet out there at the moment.

But there are still tasks to do that will pave the way to your best ever gardening year. How about sorting out that junk-filled shed, persuading the chillies to get through the winter, and sitting down to plan, plan, plan…

Tidying the shed

Each year I make a solemn New Year’s Resolution not to let the garden shed get into a mess, and I stick to it for about three months. Then the mayhem of spring sowing, planting, supporting and feeding begins, and before I know it, I can barely get in there for all the horticultural paraphernalia accumulated round the door! I know it’s rather small, but it’s still a critically-important part of my gardening life, and deserves better treatment.

A dry day in January is a fab time to tackle this long-delayed job.  And you MUST be systematic.

First of all, take everything out, and I mean everything. Make three piles: 

a) the things that actually belong in the shed, 

b) the things that DON’T belong in the shed, but you’ll keep elsewhere or donate or even sell. 

c) the things that are utter junk and must be chucked. Be RUTHLESS – have you used that bit of kit in the last three years? No? Out it should go.

Now all of that stuff is out of the way, you can set about the space itself, and it makes sense to start from the top and work down. Clear cobwebs and dust from the roof with a broom and then wipe shelves and walls, before tackling the floor.  Sweep away all the dropped compost, vermiculite and blown-in leaves, paying particular attention to the corners where hibernating snails like to gather (I found dozens of the critters amongst the pots too!).  Wash down the windows if you have them.  

You have your so-called ‘clean slate’, so it’s time to look critically at the space you’ve got. Are you going to have enough hooks, racks or shelves for everything in your ‘keep’ pile? Could you improve the workbench area by widening it, perhaps, or re-arranging the tools-area around it?  Make those adjustments or improvements now.

If you still have the energy (or better still, a handy sub-gardener) clean and sort the pots, wipe down spades, hoes and forks, sharpen cutting tools, etc. before you start putting them back into their correct places.

Once they’re all back, you’ll be amazed at how much bigger your shed looks – well, I always am, anyway!  The sense of righteous satisfaction is off the scale – a shed to match the perfection of Monty Don’s…at least for a short while.

Overwintering chillies

We were lucky enough to have a really brilliant chilli harvest in 2024. The thing about chillies is that they need a really long growing season, and the seeds should really be sown in January.  This is what I did with these plants last January, but it’s a long time to be nurturing the seedlings, potting them on, etc. before they start producing fruit. Since they are actually short-lived perennials, I am keen to see to see if I can keep the same plants going through the winter and thus have a jump-start on the 2025 harvest.

I am keeping the plants in a cool, closed frost-free conservatory, with a window-light cracked open to allow some airflow.  This is important for deterring spider mites and other small pests to which chilli plants are prone.  I’ll take off the remaining fruits and thread them on strings to dry and then trim off the dead or drooping leaves, cutting many of the shoots back to the woody stems.  I’ll keep the compost just moist, but definitely not wet which might prompt the roots to rot or the arrival of fungal problems such as Botrytis.  

I won’t be feeding them at all and I’ll re-pot them into fresh compost in early spring.  Fingers crossed for a great EARLIER harvest next summer (but I’m also intending to sow a few more seeds as well – we gardeners know all about the belt-and-braces approach, don’t we!🤣)

Plan your garden

Can I urge you to sit down with the last of the Christmas cake and a cuppa and plan your garden for next year.

For instance, will you grow annuals – if so which ones? Can you make your borders less frenetic this year by planting in groups or using repetition? Are there plants that will need moving or ditching because they are not thriving where they are?  Which veg do you fancy growing this year? Have you got plans for new features you’d like to add?

This is such an enjoyable and useful task, incorporating dreams of your perfect garden, so take time over it and use photos of last summer’s garden to help your decisions. Apart from the reflective nature of this occupation, I also find it really helps to curb my propensity for impulse-buying when the new catalogues come thudding through the letterbox!

Gardening shorts

• Inspect stored dahlias, begonias or cannas – are they rotting anywhere or going soft? Cut out those bits promptly so that, like bad apples (which you should also be checking!), these patches of rot don’t spoil the whole clump of tubers and roots.

• Bareroot shrubs, hedges, roses and trees can still be planted through January, as long as the soil isn’t waterlogged or frozen.  If you can’t plant bareroot plants straightaway, soak the roots for a couple of hours in a bucket of water and then heel them into the ground  somewhere out of the way so that the roots don’t dry out, until you are ready to plant them properly.

• You can harvest cabbages, Brussels sprouts, kale and cauliflowers in January. Delicious purple sprouting broccoli will begin to crop as well – yum! 

• If you need to prune Japanese maples, remember to do it in winter while the trees are dormant. They lose a lot of sap if they are pruned during the growing season.

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To celebrate the New Year, we made a short video on our plans for 2025. We hope you enjoy it and we wish you a happy and healthy year ahead.

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Such a lovely sight in the New Year – this little gem is likely to grow for you wherever you live – and here’s why it’s one of Louise Sims’ Great Plants this Month!

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