Events in January:

- RHS London Flower Show, - 15 & 16 January 2008, Westminster, London. Click here for more details

- Orchid Weekend - 19 & 20 January 2008 - Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley, Surrey. Click here for more details

January's reader queries answered by Stephen Anderton, The Times. Click here to read

51 glorious garden websites

Times Online's gardening guru opens her address book to share her top pick of gardening websites

Related Internet Links

• A ten step guide for novice gardeners

• The gardening year planner - what to do, when

• Guides for vegetable growers

Background

• A gardener's guide to healing herbs and flowers

• Fruit bushes: what to grow and how to get a good crop

• Plant it now: a beginner's guide to snowdrops

• Neil Wormald’s week: a potted guide to growing chillies

• A guide to making a great patio garden

Background

• A year in the garden: tasks for every season

• How to start a vegetable garden

• Twenty vegetable catalogues

• Eight great vegetable gardening books

Background

• Growing kinds of chilli. . .

• Go ahead, pack it in

• Seeds of change

• Dolce vita on a plate

• Salad days that last forever

Background

• Let’s not lose the plots

• A plot on the land

• Seeds of change

• There's life in the allotment

• One potato, two potato...

Week 1:

What to do this week:

- Start chitting extra-early potato tubers for planting in late February

- Now is a good time to sharpen the blades of secateurs and loppers

- Sow the seeds of exhibition-sized onions in a heated propagator

- For an early crop, force some established rhubarb plants

- Check wooden and metal garden furniture and, where necessary, give them a coat of preservative or outdoor paint.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Week 2:

What to do this week:

- Check indoor cyclamen on a regular basis and remove any spent flowers

- Cut out pampas-grass plumes that have been broken by strong winds

- In frosty conditions, keep off the lawn, otherwise you may damage the grass

- Order shallots for planting outside next month

- Sow pelargonium seeds in a heated propagator.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Make sure you keep off the grass where bulbs are growing through; the shoots will be pushing up now and open to stomping (narcissi, snowdrops, crocuses, fritillaries, etc)

- Where ornamental ivies grow on walls and fences, cut off those thrashing wands; they are most useful to flower arrangers

- Thin out old clumps of kerria. It grows and suckers rather like a raspberry, and you should take out at the base some of the older (but, curiously, still mostly green) stems to open the colony and keep it upright. Sensitive souls prefer the single-flowered form to the usual double orange, but the flowers don't last as long

- Stand on a plank or a board when working on borders, to avoid compacting the soil

- Keep watering cans inside the greenhouse standing full of water, so you do not give plants an icy-cold shock with water straight from the standpipe.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online

Week 3:

What to do this week:

- The seeds of sweet peas can be sown (1in deep) in special sweet pea tubes and left to germinate on a warm, well-lit windowsill

- To prevent diseases, keep removing the faded flowers of indoor cyclamen

- Clean out the garden shed of unwanted rubbish and debris.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Tree ferns that lose leaves to cold every winter never grow as fast, so throw dead leaves into the crown to protect the bud, and cover the canopy with a fleece in frosty spells. Water indoor tree ferns generously, into the top of the plant

- Pots of hyacinths will shoot up and flop over in a hot room. Have them somewhere cool, and as light as possible and never on top of a hot television (the plant world must be thrilled with flat screens)

- Cut out dead, diseased and crossed branches in apples and pears (not plums and cherries at this time) to keep an airy crown

- Avoid walking on frozen grass; you will crush the blades and leave black footprints. Do you need a hard path there?

- Repair fences and check rabbit-proof chicken wire. Apply wood preservative only after windy, drying weather.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online.

Week 4:

What to do this week:

- Sow the seeds of begonia semperflorens in a heated propagator

- Order Jerusalem artichoke tubers to plant in February or March

- For early summer flowers, pot up lily bulbs in containers and place in a frost-free greenhouse

- Brush snow off large evergreens and conifers, as the weight can cause considerable damage.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Do not be afraid to run a light mower over the lawn in a windy mild spell. It will keep the grass even for the spring. Moss may be rampant now, but wait until spring to treat it.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Q&A, with Jane Owen, Times Online

Click here to go to February

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Click here to go to August

Click here to go to September

Click here to go to October

Click here to go to November

Click here to go to December

Explore Gardens

• Chelsea Flower Show

• Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

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