Around the Garden – Get Ready, Set, Sow

– By Chris Cohan –

Having recently indulged in all those holiday gatherings, you may be wondering why those jeans are tight. It must be because someone washed them in really hot water. Right? Nope. It’s just January and time for any activity to keep you out of the kitchen.

Let’s start inside and work our way out. Place a pot of water on top of a few radiators to increase the humidity in your arid house, which will be good for both the plants and you. Clean all houseplants of dead leaves and flowers. Add fresh soil to pots as needed; keep it an inch below the rim to allow room for when you water. If the soil surface has crusty salt stains, scrape off and replace with fresh soil or better yet repot. Remember: do not let your houseplants touch cold windows as they will blacken or kill the leaves. Add liquid fertilizer to all flowering houseplants every several weeks.

Double check houseplants for mealy bugs which appear as white cottony masses on the underside of leaves. Destroy the infected plants immediately. It may seem heartless, but if not removed the bugs will spread to all of your plants. The last thing you want is to be spraying with all sorts of chemicals that your family will be exposed to in a closed wintry house. Just throw the infected ones away and buy some new ones.

Consider buying cyclamens. They are colorful, long-blooming plants that will brighten up gloomy wintry rooms. They enjoy cool temperatures and can survive on four hours of sunlight a day. Start underwatering Christmas cactus just as soon as you see buds begin to form. Keep your poinsettias going strong with modest watering to avoid the ugly dry crinkling of their colorful bracts. They can survive with cooler temperatures, enjoy sun and do not require any further fertilizing.

Look out the window and decide what improvements or additions you should make when the time arrives. Take advantage of a January thaw and cut down any undesirable trees or shrubs. Remove broken and fallen limbs from the garden after storms. Break them up and use in the fireplace. Double check mulch to make sure it has not blown away from the crown of roses and other tender plants. If you have not brought in terra cotta and other pots, do so on the next sunny day. Better yet, get your kids away from video games and texting and send them outdoors for some fresh air and to help out their aging parents. Good for them and even better for your back.

Survey all outdoor plants for any over-wintering pests such as scale. Euonymous, for one, are very susceptible to scale, which appears as dark discoloration along younger stems. To control it, spray now with a dormant oil emulsion. Repeat again in late winter just before the daffodils bloom. (Ah, the bounty that is spring begins with the bold blooms of daffodils, which defy the raw weather to announce the change of seasons. But back to winter.)

Cut sprays of pussy willow and forsythia to force indoors. If you still have unused fertilizer, for goodness sake take it all to the garden and work it in around your plants.

Trim wisteria vines aggressively back to three buds. Prune other shrubs that you missed, like spirea, caryopteris and butterfly bush, to ¼ of their size. It may sound drastic but they bloom on new wood. This is how you can ensure heavy-blooming plants, which praying mantis favor to lay their egg sacks on. If you observe any sacks, leave them and a few surrounding branches as a buffer until they hatch. In late spring, you will be rewarded with a small army of ravenous baby mantis ready to clean your garden naturally of pests.

If you happen to see amaryllis, fragrant narcissus or other bulbs on sale after the holidays, why not force a few?
Look over new catalogues, get excited and send for your seeds now. Get out your notebook and let inspiration lead the way to new plans for the garden. Before you know it, the short days of January will give way to the warming sunshine of spring.