I’ve Spent My Career Working in Famous Gardens – This is the One Thing Pro Gardeners Never Skip in January
I believe in making a winning start to the year by planning the entire season
Many different jobs can be done in the garden in January, but potentially the most important one doesn’t require any pruning tools or even for you to touch the soil. It is to plan the season, a vital task that gets you fully prepared even before the first seed goes in.
I spent many years working in large public gardens, including the world-famous Hidcote Manor Garden, and ran a productive walled kitchen garden for a Michelin-star restaurant. I always took time at the start of the year to meticulously plan the season. This included mapping beds, ordering seeds, making sowing plans, and more.
Whether you plan on paper or create spreadsheets, planning the season prepares you for the one ahead and helps prevent wasted effort when spring arrives and things truly get underway. I believe this form of planning is potentially the most important thing pro gardeners do in January, and it should really top everyone’s list of January gardening jobs. Here’s why I recommend it.
Why Planning is a Step Pro Gardeners Never Skip in January
My choice of task may surprise you, but here are five reasons I believe planning and preparing is critically important at this time of year:
You Have Time to Review and Make Improvements
January is a great time for reflection and reviewing the successes and failures of the past season. This is especially true when the weather is too cold or wet to be outside pruning fruit trees, mulching, or doing other important outdoor tasks during the month.
Looking back on last year, and being proactive ahead of the new season kicking into action, means you’ll get off to a good start come spring.
Take this opportunity to review what worked well last season and what didn’t do so well. This knowledge will help you make positive decisions on what you plant and where this year.
It should also influence your picking of new plants or varieties, helping ensure you make good choices suited to your climate, location, and soil type. A great book to help you pick, as the adage goes, the right plant for the right place, is this RHS What Plant Where Encyclopaedia available at Amazon, which features over 3000 plants.
You Can Make Planting Plans to Save Time When the Season Gets Busy
Your selection of plants should be put into prepared planting plans, which should include spacings to avoid the all-too-common planting mistake of overcrowding.
Having your planting plans pre-determined prevents wasted time, as you know beforehand where they are going rather than having to make on-the-spot decisions, which don’t always yield the best results.
You can draw out planting plans on paper or write them out on a document to access on a phone or tablet while out in the garden.
Making Sowing Plans Will Maximize Success with Vegetables and Flowers
As well as planting plans, I always diligently produced a seed sowing plan at the start of the year. I tried to run a regimented ship in my vegetable gardens, and having a seed sowing plan helped me organize time and know I didn’t miss any sowings.
Mine were done with sowings planned week-by-week, but you can do it monthly to make it easier. Planning them ensures that all seeds are sown at the right time, and you don’t lose track during those busier times of the season.
A journal such as this 12-Month Vegetable Gardener’s Planner and Log Book, available at Amazon, can help you stay organized throughout the season.
If you want to be uber-prepared, you can even include when to transplant seedlings and track successional plantings on your plan. I would definitely recommend being fully prepared for starting vegetable seeds and sowing flower seeds to avoid disappointment.
Planning Your Rotation Helps to Boost Yield
When planning a kitchen garden or starting a vegetable garden, you need to consider crop rotation to maximize the yield and ensure you have a healthy growing space.
It simply means moving vegetables around the plot, which prevents soil-borne diseases from building up and crops struggling due to a lack of nutrients in the ground.
Map out the rotation for the year, and mark out beds in advance so you know what will be growing there.
You Can Get the Supplies You Need and Not Lose Out
Finally, once you have done all that planning, make sure you have everything you need. January makes an ideal time to order seeds, order bulbs, and bare-root plants, trees, and perennials.
Acting fast when ordering plants ensures you get in early before popular varieties sell out, so you get what you want.
It is also advisable to check your greenhouse and propagation station to make sure you have everything you need for the gardening year ahead, such as potting soil, pots, labels, rooting hormone for cuttings, gardening gloves, garden tools, or a heat mat and grow lights if you want to start sowing early.
This seed-starting compost is made from natural coconut coir and is ideal for starting vegetables, flowers, and herbs from seed.
This 100% natural all-purpose plant food can be used throughout the gardening season to provide essential nutrients to plants, shrubs, and trees.
A good pair of gardening gloves is required throughout the season. These long gloves are made of superfiber synthetic leather; they are tough and comfortable.
After discovering my reasoning, do you agree that planning may be the most important thing pro gardeners do in January?
But there are still many other jobs you may need to do in the garden this month, too. To help you tick tasks off your to-do list, we have compiled some helpful lists, including these on plants to prune in January, vegetables to plant in January, and flowers to sow in January.
There should be more than enough here to keep you going.
