This month’s jobs from Sherborne’s expert gardener Pete Harcom

• Pruning

Winter pruning can be done now on your climbing roses, apple and pear trees. Also magnolias, cotinus, berberis and flowering currants can all be pruned now.

Try not to cut too far away from – or too close to – a bud, and always make the cut slope away from the bud.

• Sowing

Sow your antirrhinum, sweet peas, lobelia, begonia semperflorens, geraniums (pelargoniums) now,
in gentle heat in the greenhouse or simply on an indoors windowsill – in a propagator if possible.

• Planting

If the soil is not too wet or frozen, now’s the time to plant bare root roses, shrubs, hedging and ornamental trees. Bare rooted plants are far less expensive than container grown plants and can establish swiftly. Many deciduous and evergreen shrubs, trees and hedging plants can be planted bare rooted as they are dormant between November and March. After this time of dormancy, the roots will then establish themselves quickly as the soil warms up in the spring.

• Organising

Check that small alpines in the garden don’t become smothered by fallen leaves and other wind-blown debris.
Check for rot on stored bulbs and tubers, and ensure dahlia and canna tubers haven’t totally dried out.

Clear away soggy and collapsed stems of perennials and compost them.
Remove and bin hellebore foliage marked with black blotches, to limit the spread of leaf spot disease – do not compost these leaves.

Deadhead winter pansies and other bedding regularly, and remove any foliage affected by downy mildew.
Take hardwood cuttings from deciduous shrubs, such as forsythia, willow and viburnum.
Take root cuttings of fleshy-rooted perennials such as oriental poppies, acanthus and verbascum. Order seeds and plug plants
An idea worth trying might be to press mistletoe berries into the bark of apple trees to establish your own mistletoe plants!

• Planning

Now’s an excellent time to plan and replant herbaceous borders. You don’t need to be an experienced gardener; ideas can be drawn from the web such as www.rhs.org.uk. There are many websites that will help with your design ideas.

by Pete Harcom – Head Gardener at Sherton Abbas Gardening

Sponsored By Thorngrove Garden Centre

In the quiet days of the middle of winter, Barry Cuff reflects on the last year of growing in order to improve this year’s harvest.

The plot supplied us with wonderful fresh produce over the Christmas period.
For our dinners there was cauliflower, romanesco, sprouts, leek, carrot and parsnip. Romanesco has small lime green conical florets which are more tender than cauliflower curds. With no real frosts, the salad patch continued producing excellent leaves of Mizuna, Palla Rosso radicchio, two mustards, Golden Streaks and Red Frills plus Bluemoon and Redmoon Autumn radishes. Both these radishes have coloured flesh and look great in the salad bowl.

How our 2021 looked

Looking back over the last twelve months, it is time to assess the performance of the varieties we grew.

Of course, as in farming, the weather has a major role in this, and I keep records of the weather on the allotment. Rain, or lack of it, is the most important factor for us. Rainfall for 2021 was about 39 inches, which is above average.

The wettest months were May and October. The driest April and August. White frosts occurred at the end of April and the first week of May.

Under attack

Our five lines of Hurst Green Shaft peas suffered attacks from pea and bean weevil so yields were somewhat down on previous years.

Attacks usually are worse during cold dry spells when emergence is slow. For some reason the mangetouts were not attacked. The garlic produced much smaller bulbs than usual, despite being planted early. Our beetroot yields were well down – some of this was due to sparrows who love the young seed leaves!

The rain in May and June did wonders for growth, so despite these problems most vegetables gave excellent yields. Sweetcorn (Lark), squashes (Crown Prince, Butterfly and Sweet Dumpling) carrots (Early Nantes) Parsnip (Palace) and French beans (Safari) were the top performers. Onion, broad beans, runner beans and celeriac all did well too.

Our potatoes loved the wet May and June and yielded well. Top performers were Rooster, Elfe, Picasso, International Kidney and Charlotte.

The brassicas all benefited from the rain in June. Once again Cendis cauliflower produced heads weighing two to three kilograms! We were pleased that Ironman produced secondary heads well into December.

So a good year on the whole, with a few exceptions. We now look forward to the new growing season.

By Barry Cuff

Sponsored by Thorngrove Garden Centre

January feeling a struggle? Thorngrove’s expert team share their own enjoyment in the start of the year, the steady, busy transition to spring – and invite you to share in it.

Here we are again; a fresh start, right? The decorations are boxed away, and at Thorngrove our eyes are firmly fixed on the Spring that will be upon us before we know it. The first week back in January mainly consists of A LOT of pre-spring cleaning and preparing room for the new plants that will be along soon. Both our Glasshouse and Plant Nursery team have their work cut out for them, but experts Chris and Mark have also expressed excitement about this time of year.
“Sometimes the first few weeks after Christmas can be seen as a bit of recuperation time – but not for me!” said Chris “Things have already started ramping up with sowing continuing, potting up of wedding trees – I enjoy it though, I prefer to be occupied. We’ve also been getting our Employ My Ability students back into the swing of things after their well- deserved break, and they’ve all shown great enthusiasm and brought lots of Christmas stories with them.
Mark agrees “January isn’t as bare as some may think. The Camellias are still looking lovely, and just coming through now are Hamamelis, winter flowering shrub. This time of year can be understated in terms of vibrancy on the shrubs, but there is plenty to take in (and lots of work to be done), trust me. I enjoy this transition from Winter towards Spring very much!”

Blue Monday

Supposedly the saddest day of the year, this year Blue Monday, falls on the 17th January – approaching as I write. It can often feel like an overbearing, dark day on the calendar. Back to work fatigue has caught up with us, Christmas dented our wallets but payday is far off and the weather is often grim!

Being in an environment like the one we have here at Thorngrove really does help make things that little bit easier.

Shrubs springing to life, and the different teams pottering around to make our garden centre the best it can possibly be. If you’re feeling a little low in this early part of the year, consider stopping by – even just for a walk around, we promise you’ll spot something that will bring a smile to your face.

Thorngrove Garden Centre