Around here in zone 7 (Tennessee) it’s still a little early to start getting very active in the garden but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t be working on some things in the garden. Here is a to-do list for January to help get you started on a great year in the garden!
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January Gardening To-Do List
Plan Your Garden
The first step in a successful garden is to come up with a good plan. What plants do you want to grow, what seeds do you want to try, what new garden beds to make? New garden structures? It can be helpful to go back and look at what the previous year’s garden was like and what you found success with as well as what failed.
Here are some general ideas to include in a yearly garden plan:
- Plants to Plant/Order
- Structures to buy or build
- Equipment you need
- Supplies for seed starting, soil mixes, composting, plant propagation
- New Garden Beds or enlarging old ones
- When to plant various plants or crops
- Pest spray schedule
- garden layouts
Seed Orders
January is usually when all the seed catalogs arrive with full color pictures of amazing flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Plan out any additions for the year as well as reorders for seeds you enjoyed in the past. I like to make a mega seed list with everything I would want for the year then prune the list down to what I could actually manage. It’s still usually too much but you aren’t really a gardener if you don’t over plant/plan!
Seed Starting
I’ve found that some seeds like peppers and eggplant need a little more time than others to get growing. I like to start these seeds toward the middle to end of January. For tomato seeds I’ll usually hold off on seed starting until February. Indoor seed starting can be a lot of fun and it doesn’t have to be complicated. One of my favorite seed starting methods is to use plastic cups as mini-greenhouses.
Heat mats and grow lights are very helpful but not always necessary if you have a sunny spot in the house. For grow lights I will just use old shop lights with fluorescent bulbs. They seem to do a pretty good job without upgrading to the more expensive plant lights.
Pruning Shrubs and Trees
January is a good time to do a little pruning on trees and shrubs. When pruning pay attention to the type of hydrangea you have so you don’t accidentally remove the flowering branches for this year. Some of your trimmings in January can also make great hardwood cuttings to propagate more plants.
When pruning pay attention to the direction the last bud is facing. That will end up being the new direction for the branch. You can control how the shrub grows by selecting buds that are pointing in the direction you want them to be.
Garden Clean Up
If you are like me you leave the dead stems of last years plants up for the birds and bugs. In January it’s time to gradually begin cleaning these beds up so that you can start prepping the beds for this year. Compost what you can but be careful about putting seeds in the compost bin. Fortunately the birds will have cleaned out a lot of the seeds for you! Also be on the lookout for invasive grasses like Bermuda or crabgrass. Try to weed that out while you can easily see it.
Start New Garden Beds
This year we will be starting over from scratch with brand new garden beds. January in Tennessee is often very mild and good for working outdoors so I’ll try and take advantage of good weather and build new garden beds for this year’s vegetable and ornamental gardens. Since filling up raised beds can be challenge, preparing the beds early allows for time to fill them with Hugelkultur methods, compost, leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, lasagna gardening, or however you plan to fill them! (How to Fill a Raised Bed for Less than $15 – YouTube)
Hopefully this short garden to-do list for January will get your gardening year started off on the right foot!
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