What to do in your garden during January
- Plan your vegetable beds with our ten top tips:
- Consider the planting space available
- Chose the right location
- Prepare your patch
- Get your soil ready
- Set out your plants in advance
- Think about companion planting which can deter pests and improve disease resistance
- Look at vertical growing for tomatoes, beans, peas etc
- Use pots for flexible planting especially for herbs and tender plants that ideally should be moved indoors during winter
- Control pests with organic methods where possible to stay away from harmful pesticides and sprays.
- Fertilise by using organic compost and an organic plant food like our Natural Plant Food
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dggykv3bo/images/w_640,h_480,c_scale/f_auto,q_auto:best/v1671450495/Vegtable-beds/Vegtable-beds.jpg?_i=AA)
- Spread our soil improving mulch around the base of plants in flowerbeds as well vegetable beds that are to be prepared for seeds.
- Order seeds from mail order catalogues
- Spread Woodchip on slippery paths after cleaning from leaf debris and moss
- Plant bare-root roses, shrubs, hedging and ornamental trees (checking the ground isn’t frozen)
- Pruning of apple and pear trees, wisteria, ivy, virginia crepper and climbing hydrangea
- Take root cuttings of perennials such as oriental poppies, acanthus and verbascums
- Establish snowdrops and hellebores – buying flowering plants and chose the best varieties
- Take hardwood cuttings from deciduous shrubs
- Clear up the garden from autumn debris and soggy stems of perennials to be added to your compost heap
- Deadhead winter bedding plants
- Clean and sharpen garden tools like shears and spades, ready for use.
- Service your lawnmower and check over the general condition of all garden equipment
![Gardening checklist for January from Apsley Farms](https://res.cloudinary.com/dggykv3bo/images/w_1024,h_624,c_scale/f_auto,q_auto:best/v1671187905/snowdrops/snowdrops.jpg?_i=AA)
Sustainability and efficiency are at the heart of everything we do at Apsley Farms. We’ve adopted cutting edge technologies and turned low value crops into renewable energy. We focus on a circular economy by returning the nutrients in our digestate products back to the land as a fertiliser.
Our process of generating green gas and other important by-products ticks three important boxes: it displaces natural gas (fossil fuel) in the gas grid to heat people’s homes; it displaces CO2 made by the fertiliser industry, which is essential in the food industry; and it simultaneously generates natural fertiliser in the process!