January Garden Calendar

This January is a wet one, a good time to be careful about not compacting the soil in your planting beds until things have dried out for a few days. Weeding now is much easier than weeding later and the fresh scent of the rain is fabulous. Winter pruning of fruit trees and roses are best done now before the plants waste their Spring energy on flowers and shoots that will be cut away. A fresh dose of mulch helps keep the weed seeds from germinating. Filling in a small bit of erosion now can save the filling of a large ditch later. It is a great time to be in the garden dodging raindrops.

The kitchen garden finds me looking for Oregano, Marjoram, Cilantro and Sage. My lettuce bolts later, greens hold well in the garden now. I love the fancy lettuce varieties that never make it to the supermarket. They are just as easy to grow and taste much better, they just don't pack and store as well. I pick just as many leaves as I need. A cut head of lettuce will grow roots if you try to start it. The narcissus bulbs are blooming fabulously bringing a heady fragrance to the garden. I have multiple varieties planted to extend the season from Thanksgiving to Easter. There is nothing like snowpeas picked fresh, they lose their sweetness way too fast. Many of them never make it to the kitchen tempting the gardener long before they make it that far.