Armchair gardening

If you are fed up with being outside in the cold, the rain and the snow, how about getting ahead with your garden this month from the comfort of your armchair, with a nice cup of tea and a cosy fire? Take some time to make some plans for the coming season before the seeds need sowing and the weeds start growing. It will save you time and money in the months to come. It’s also a much better way of spending the afternoon, than wandering aimlessly around the garden, looking at all the mess the snow has left behind. Here’s how to come up with a great plan for the year ahead:
　
Plan your time.
It’s easy to be consumed by a huge wave of enthusiasm, as soon as the first flowers start to bloom in the Spring. This is the year you are going to 1) plant up hanging baskets all along the front of the house 2) have a bowling green lawn 3) re paint all the fences 4) replant the whole of the front garden 5) pull out every weed by the end of February……..You get the general idea. Lots of good intentions, but have you got anything like enough time to carry them through? Leaf through your diary for the year ahead and have a think about how much time you actually have, week on week, to garden. Do you have time most weekends, or is that time taken up with shopping, visiting friends and other hobbies? Have you got any periods, when you will have no time whatsoever – you may be going away on holiday or have a busy period at work. Try and decide how many hours you will have every month. Then, take a look at the time you need to maintain the garden and complete new projects. Make sure they match, or you are in for a stressful year!
Plan for low maintenance
Think about jobs that you dislike and that take a lot of time and if there are any ways to reduce the maintenance involved. Hate mowing? Reshape the lawn to make the job quicker or get rid of the lawn altogether. Hate weeding? Mulch all the borders to keep the weeds out. There are usually a few ways to cut down on maintenance if you plan ahead.
　
Sow slow!
There are lots of gaps in the borders at the moment and the garden centres are full of lots of packets of lovely new seeds, waiting to fill the gaps. But don’t go mad! Every seed sown in the greenhouse has to be nurtured, pricked out and potted on before it makes it to the garden. So just sow what you need. If you only have space for a dozen marigolds in the border, grow a dozen, not 18 or 24. You know you don’t need them and they’ll end up on the compost heap.
Veg matters.
If you are growing your own veg, only grow what you want to eat. There’s no point spending time and money sowing seeds, planting out young vegetables, protecting them from slugs and watering them, if you don’t eat them. I’ve still got a dozen cabbages in my garden, full of slug holes and looking very sorry for themselves. I spent ages keeping the cabbage white butterflies off them in the summer, but, truth is, we don’t really eat much cabbage. Looks like the chickens are in for a treat.
This is a great time of the year for paper and pencil gardening, so get some plans made now, ready for the Spring.