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Frog Blog...

December/January
2011/2012

Well, the winter so far seems to have returned to a more familiar pattern, wet, windy and mostly mild.
Fortunately I decided to keep all my frost and snow defences ready but undemployed. Fleece on palm trees and bubble wrap on ground cover plants are unsightly in mild weather when they are not needed.Indeed, in high winds they can be downright dangerous. We shall keep wraps and fleeces, and salt for paths and driveways, at the front of our store until the danger of frost and snow has passed, because if it comes, we may have little warning.
One of the key garden jobs now is pruning wisteria.
In July, you should have cut back the long whippy new growth. These appear after flowering, and grow amazingly fast, inches every day, twining round every thing they can reach. These must be cut back to within a foot or less of the main stem. In July, count out 5 or 6 buds from where the shoot leaves the main stem, and cut just above the 5th or 6th bud.
Now for the January bit! In January, you must return to each of these pruned growths, and cut off another 2 buds. If the plant is old enough (6-7 years) and growing well, this treatment will produce beautiful flowers from each remaining bud.
After pruning a wisteria, don't feed it! They perform much better if they are starved!
If you've got any energy left after the wisteria, which can be a long job, how is the lawn looking? Areas which have become thin, for example under trees, will benefit from reseeding at this time of year. Lawn under trees are struggling against a double treat, first from shade, which all lawn grasses hate, and also from a chemical attack by the sugary honeydew which rains down from the trees in summer. This is the sticky stuff you find on your car if you park it under broadleafed trees in summer. It's basically just tree sap excreted by the tiny aphids who live under the leaves, and lawn grasses hate it almost as much, as they hate shade.
In winter, there are no leaves on the trees, and during mild weather, grass seed grows well, and reseeded lawns will recover quickly, and be lovely and green again by spring. If the weather turns cold, with frost or snow, the new seed will simply lie dormant till milder weather, so it wont be wasted, and its very easy to protect the seed from hungry pigeons!
Talking about birds, in January the birds in your garden will be getting very hungry, even in mild weather, but especially if its cold, co please don't forget to feed them.
Last autumn we planted quite a lot of the exceptionally early-flowering "Paperwhite" narcissus, and I saw the first flower open on one of these on the 5th of January. Surely a record even for this early flower!!

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Archive...

December 2011/January 2012
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
Small Birds vs Bigger Bird
Fruit and Veg
Obsessive Tidiness
Irrigation
Foxes and Pets
Knotweed Control
Tree Surgery Advise
Horse Chestnut
Mycorrhizal Root Treatment
Water Conservation
The Vine Weevil
Water - The Garden Lifeblood
Climate Change & Bug Life
Busy Lizzie