-EP258 Happy New Year & January Jobs To Get Ahead!!

Kickstart your gardening year with us as we explore whether the urge to plant early in January truly pays off. What if waiting just a little longer could lead to a more bountiful harvest? We navigate through the snowy challenges in Ireland and reflect on the holiday season's warmth before getting into the nitty-gritty of garden planning. Discover the art of timing when it comes to sowing seeds and the tricks seasoned gardeners use to safeguard their seedlings during the lingering winter chill. Whether you're an eager beginner or a seasoned pro, there's wisdom to be gained from knowing when to hold back for greater garden rewards.

Gain insight into the essentials of seed quality and preparation that promise a thriving garden. Learn the secret to securing the freshest seeds from trustworthy sources and how a simple germination test can save you from planting duds. We tackle the challenges of peat-free compost, offering practical tips on blending it with peat-based alternatives for consistency. Plus, we discuss how to create a pristine sowing area that enhances your plants' growth. Finally, we guide you on organizing seed potatoes, especially if you're blessed with a polytunnel or greenhouse. Join us for a practical and engaging conversation that sets the stage for a successful gardening adventure!

Chapters

• 0:12 Garden Tasks and Planting Timing
• 14:28 Seed Quality and Propagation Preparation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

how's it going, everybody? And welcome to episode 258 of master my garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is the first episode of 2025 and excited to get back at it and get started again and, you know, keep moving on towards the springtime. Happy new year to you all. First, hope you had great christmases wherever you're listening, and, yeah, the really great christmas is a nice, relaxing time. Lots of, lots of things going on, lots of people around met up with lots of people and, yeah, it was a great. It was a great christmas, really enjoyable, and here in our house the little lady emmy was is she's six next week and she, she was, you know, really, really excited for christmas this year and uh, yeah, it was great to see Freya is heading for 16, so she's getting a little bit older and not as into some of the you know the Christmas stuff, but it was a. It was a great Christmas, great family Christmas all around and, yeah, delighted to be back at it.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Since Christmas it's the weather has been interesting all over. Christmas was really nice, kind of mild, uh, nice bright days, so it was lovely to be able to get out and get go for walks and so on and yeah, it's been. It was a. Christmas itself was was a really, really kind in terms of weather.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Now here in Ireland since last week it has took a took a little bit of a nosedive, as it can at this time of the year, and where I live we're pretty much in a heavy covering of snow for the last five days, so five or six days. So it's been an interesting time. We got it pretty bad here, but I know, not as bad as certain areas. I know there was a good bit of damage done in certain areas and you know that can happen at this time of the year. It's for a little bit of an inconvenience for people. I actually don't mind it too much, but it's a little bit of an inconvenience for people generally. And I suppose from that point of view we're just generally not set up for it here because it doesn't happen that terrible often. But we've five days here now of snow and schools are closed. Kids are, I suppose, happy to be off school or to wear, at least for the initial few days, and now I think I think everybody kind of needs a little bit of routine, routine now as it has gone on for the, for the sort of fifth day, but hopefully fingers crossed, next week. Um, there is talk weather-wise of quite a big increase in the temperatures over the weekend, which should tie everything out quite quickly, and then, of course, kids get back to school and things can start to get back to normal on the garden in front.

Speaker 1: 3:00

It's, it's very interesting, I suppose this episode for the last couple years, the first early episodes of the year, I'm, you know, chatting about what we can be doing in january and so on, and I always talk about, you know, the, the kind of rush to get sewing and it's. It's funny because there's differing opinions on on on getting sewing and we're going to chat about that a bit. Uh, my, my opinion is the same as it has been is that there's not really much. There is things you can sew in january, but I find that there is very, very little benefit to most people to sew anything in january. So that's kind of my, it's kind of been, it has always been my thinking. I guess it has always been my way. Um, and I do understand, you know, people having the january sewing lists and and so on, but I just don't think that it suits a lot of people and most people, I think most people listening here.

Speaker 1: 4:08

You know we're home gardeners, we're not market gardeners, so we don't have to have something for a particular time and what ends up happening is, if you start too early, you'll get germination, no problem, you'll get some growth, no problem. But I find at this stage that if you're doing it at this stage of the year, you're just going to be minding your seedlings or your plants for so long. And I saw some people last week you know some people who are very good growers, by the way, I'm not saying that they're not, they're absolutely very good growers sowing tomatoes. And I get it because for some people it might actually work to your, to your benefit, to get them, get them going earlier, to get into the ground in your, in your greenhouse, earlier. And there's certain areas of the country that are quite a bit, I suppose, milder than what I am here.

Speaker 1: 5:03

So I certainly won't be sowing pretty much anything in January. I'm actually thinking that I'm going to do a little trial with a small few tomatoes, maybe towards the end of the month, and that'll be the first kind of sowing and all the others then will follow along afterwards. I am not even going to do a seed sowing guide for January because, as I say, there is some seeds you can sow. Then I'll follow along afterwards. I am not even going to do a seed sowing guide for January because there, as I said, there is some seeds you can sow, like I know some people will be sowing onions this month, aubergines, things like that. But just for me, I'm not going to do any sowing guide until until until the 1st of February. And, yeah, we'll, we'll kick off with that the first weekend of February.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Um, but that doesn't mean that there isn't things that we can be doing. So, um, if you're in a, as I say, a warmer part of the country, you may well decide that, and experience may tell you that you're good to go and that you can start sowing a few seeds. And if you're in that lucky position, work away. I think it's, you know, if that works for you, great. Just certainly for most of us, you'll end up minding a lot of those plants for just too long and it'll just find it's not worthwhile. There's no great benefit in getting started in january, but there is, as I say, there is lots of things that we can be doing in january and I suppose I'll talk about some of those and talk about the things that I am doing.

Speaker 1: 6:29

Um, a couple of getting a couple of load of mushroom compost, hopefully over the next couple of weeks, once the snow clears, and so on, and the plan there is to mulch some of these beds. I told you that I was trying to tame certain areas again and that process has started and it's going quite well. And, yeah, that that's what the what the mushroom compost will be used for. But on top of that then I'm topping up all the beds with compost, all the vegetable beds with compost definitely need fresh wood chip in some of those as well. The polytunnel needs a lot of work. For any of you that have been listening the whole time, a lot of, a lot of the garden got neglected last year, you know, for for various reasons. So there's, you know there's going to be a lot of work needed ahead of the growing season to get things, I suppose, in shape.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Um, but for for everyone listening at home, some of the big jobs that you can be doing this month is any of your existing vegetable beds. Give them a little. If you've already started them in a no, no dig situation, dress them with a small amount of compost. That might be only an inch or two inches of compost. Dress them, that'll freshen them up, have them ready for the springtime.

Speaker 1: 7:48

If you're starting new beds, you can do that by creating, you know, a no dig in two ways. You can do it kind of you can put down your brown cardboard and then you can put your six inches of compost on top, making the beds to the size that suits you. Or you can do it with, you know, putting the compost directly down onto the ground, but then you do need to cover it down for a period of time. So essentially what you're trying to do is just completely black out the area for the next couple of months. That allows time for the weeds and vegetation to die down and for the worms to start working up and down through the compost and essentially then you have beds ready to go for sort of March time, april time, and that's. You know, that's kind of a really important job at this time of the year. If you leave it, you can do it still.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Do it in February. You can still pretty much do it at any stage of the year, but it becomes less successful the later into the year, the more aggressive the growth is at that stage. So January, february, brilliant months, particularly January, because everything is really dormant at this stage of the year. And I suppose that's another point. When it comes to sowing seed I've mentioned it on the podcast several times before that sowing of seed you need to work to, I suppose, a time frame, you need to work to dates, I suppose.

Speaker 1: 9:11

But the big thing and the big indicator of when you can really get going is when nature fully wakes up outside and you'll know that, you'll feel that, you'll see that, you'll hear that and that gives you a good indication that, yeah, it's good to go now. And I always find that prior sowings to that feeling. And that could be early Februaryary, it could be early march, it could be late march, just depends on the springtime. But when you get that feeling, that sense that everything is waking up outside, everything is starting to get going, nature is starting to get going, then typically it's a great time to pick up the seed sowing and get going as quickly as possible at it. Um, so yeah, I've kind of gone off track there a little bit. So that's so creating beds, topping up beds, doing all your cleanup work like I like what we would have said in december a lot of your cleanup work, a lot of your structural work. You can do all that sort of thing now, and that leaves you in a position that, when the season does kick off, you're you're really doing. You know the essential stuff. You have all the the groundwork done and all the heavy lifting, all the hard graft done.

Speaker 1: 10:17

Another really important thing at this time of the year, what I'm saying not to be sowing seed, something that is really really important is to source your seed, check the seed that you're keeping over. You know if you've, if you've seed that's been hanging around for a while, like I do, and I've seed here now and it's probably going into its fifth year, I would say big packets of it. Tested the germination on most of them last year. Some of them were perfect, some of them were deteriorating, and what I find is when there's a couple of things obviously, as time passes, the germination of seeds decreases, and not alone that the vigor of the ones that do germinate is reducing as well. So the fresher the seed, the better the seed. Typically and that's certainly 100 true for some of them like parsnips if you don't have very, very fresh seed, you're not going to have a good harvest and that's very, very, very important. Some of the brassicas last a bit longer and they're you know what I'm talking about that I have for four or five years and they're still germinating good and they're still growing well. However, there's certain other ones that you could just see last year. They were a little bit little weaker, a little bit more spindly and just not as good. So at this stage of the year, sourcing quality seed is important, sourcing as fresh a seed as you can, then gathering up the varieties.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Have a look, have a listen, go back on your notes. See what worked well, see what grew well for you, see what was successful for you. Any of your gardening friends. Have a listen, go back on your notes, see what worked well, see what grew well for you, see what was successful for you. Any of your gardening friends. Have a chat with them. You know if there's new things that you're trying to grow, maybe they have the seed already, so that you're able to get yourself organized ahead of season.

Speaker 1: 12:06

And then get yourself a little diary, an excel spreadsheet or whatever your method of choice is, and start to schedule out. You know your, your sewing, your first sewings and so on, for any of you that are taking part in the grow your own mastermind garden, grow your own food course. There's the monthly sewing guides there and they tell you precisely what to sow every month and what methods you can use to sow that. So at the start of every month you can go in. You can see right for the month of February. This is what I need to do. Here's the sort of basic guidelines and here's the exact sowing list how to sow them and in what method you're going to use to sow them as well. But if you're you know that's that's what you need to be doing is sort of getting organized, getting planning, getting scheduling and checking your seed. Just to sort of talk about seed.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Then when you go, when you go to source your seed if you're buying it in your garden centers or online just make sure you're you're getting the the freshest seed that you can possibly get. A lot of the seeds you know that you will see in garden centers will have a packing date on the back of it and with different varieties and different brands, that packing date it probably doesn't mean a whole lot, to be honest with you. So if you see a packing date on seeds, it might mean that they were packed on November 2024. But you actually don't know how old that seed is, because seed can be sold so long as the germination rate is above a certain percentage, and I think that percentage might be something like 65 or 75%, something around that. So it's not not a really high germination rate. So one seed is is still passing germination tests to that let's call it 75 percent. Then it's legally allowed to be sold. But certain companies would use really high germination percentages. So certain companies would only work with seeds that are a minimum of 95, for example, and then anything that drops below that they would sell on the open market. Then some of the other seed companies might buy that packages up and, you know, keep using it until it starts to drop below that 70 level.

Speaker 1: 14:28

So the point I'm making here is that you'll see your seeds with a packing date on it but you don't know really how fresh that seed is and you don't know the germination rates on it because they're not obliged to pack, to print that on the pack. So you have no idea. But typically speaking, you're looking for some of the really good, really really good seed companies you know that are in your own country. Talk to them. A lot of them will have very fresh harvest seeds. They'll tell you the sowing this, they'll tell you to harvest this. You'll know exactly how old that seed is, how fresh that seed is. Other than that, you're looking for the trusted brands, ones that you've had success with before, and, yeah, that's kind of a good way to make sure that you're getting decent quality, decent quality seed. Work with reputable, reputable people and so on.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Then, with the seed that you do have, do a little germination test on them. You can do that really simply little saucer with some kitchen paper on it, bring it into a hot area, a little bit of light, and sprinkle 10 seeds on it. Just see how many seeds germinate. That'll give you a good idea whether it's going to be worth working with it or not. So if you put out, you know, 10 cabbage seeds, for example, and you get germination of three in perfect conditions in your house, then that packet of seed is more than likely not going to be very successful for you. So it's going to give you poor germination, sporadic germination, and then the ones that do do germinate are likely to be a little bit spindly, a little bit weak and not so much vigor in them. So the ideal scenario then is just get rid of that seed and, you know, get, get yourself fresh seeds so that you're getting sort of more effect from from your efforts, so your effort of sowing seeds and so on.

Speaker 1: 16:12

Then, when it comes to growing media again and spoke about this on the podcast a good few times in an ideal world I think we'd all be using a peat-free compost at this stage. A lot of the peat-free compost out there have not got the the seed sowing element nailed. It's very sporadic. The seed sowing element nailed it's very sporadic. The what they call the ec levels, the salt levels, and it can be very, very varying from batch to batch and even from brand to brand and even from a single brand coming off the same palette. You might get great germination from one bag and pour off another, and that's why I find that you know it's just so sporadic.

Speaker 1: 16:54

So in a, in a scenario like that, you need to mix, you know, some of that peat free with some quality multi-purpose peat based compost, to be honest with you, because that's what's given the best results. There is obviously some very good seed sowing ones, but but again spoke about it before but they would have origins with cocoa, cocoa fibre in it and that's again coming from if you live in Ireland, the other side of the world. So I don't really see you know how that's any more environmentally friendly than using, you know, a little half bag of multipurpose peat-based compost. If that's what's needed, I think I ideally, as I said, in an ideal world, we'd have a really good quality plant-based, you know compost that isn't, isn't peat-based, and we're probably getting close to that. But we're not there yet and we're not there yet and we're not there yet unless you're adding something like cocoa coir and so on. So that's a consideration Get your seed germination compost sorted.

Speaker 1: 18:04

I this year will be using I'll be trialing one or two just for big iron one or two of the peat-free and I'll try it side by side with a standard peat based one. Now, peat is just a phenomenal product for germinating, for germinating seeds. It's so airy, has so much you need air at the root zone and it's just so good for that. It's, yeah, as I said, a small amount that I'm going to use versus taking in, using a compost that has, for example, coco coir in it. It's very hard to see, see how you know the, the one that's called environmentally friendly is particularly environmentally friendly when it's coming from the other side of the world. So, yeah, that's uh, maybe a bit of debate for another day, but the point I'm making is to have your seeds, your seeds organized, your compost organized.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Next thing to do and this is really important is to get your propagation or your seed sowing area kind of tidied up and ready. So not have any old plants lying around, any capillary matting or anything like that. Make sure that's all cleaned. Make sure that the area is if you're, you know, have covers that the perspex or the glass or the polythene or whatever it is that you're using for that covered area. Make sure that that's clean, that there's that is fresh, so that you're going in, you're given a healthy environment for for all your seeds going in, and that that that's really really important. Then your seed trays organizing all those, your labels just get all that stuff organized now might take a couple of hours, but it's really well worthwhile and save you just stressing and and not being organized when it comes to actually the point where you can get going and can get some seed. So that's, uh, yeah, that's another really important thing.

Speaker 1: 20:02

So what else can we be doing this month, um, seed potatoes. Towards the end of the month you can start organizing those. Some people in the warmer parts of the country will will be able to start maybe planting some into the polytunnels and greenhouses. And, yeah, I'll be doing that, but it won't be, won't be in in january, it'll be in february. Again, garlic and onions I've planted my autumn ones already. You can still do that in the spring time. It'll be a little bit later on, but you can do that in springtime. And then, yeah, we'll be kicking off with all the sowing, uh, later, probably into early february.

Speaker 1: 20:39

Final thing, just in terms of the, you know, the fruit and vegetable or the edible garden is still loads of time for bare root planting of trees, apple trees, pear trees, plum trees. You know your canes, your raspberry canes, all your bush fruit, your top fruit, and the likes of strawberries and so on. So again, you can create your, you can fully create your fruit and vegetable garden at this stage of the year. So, yeah, there's loads to be doing. It's a steady and slow start. Hopefully, by the time we're back here next friday snow will have cleared and we'll have sort of normal january weather and you know, everyone will be able to be out and about and and get moving on it. I hope, wherever you are, that you didn't have too much damage with the snow. I know certain parts really did get a hammering and I saw some people with pictures of polytunnels and and so on which had collapsed under the weight of it. So, yeah, just uh, hopefully nobody nobody listening has too much damage and hopefully everybody's able to get themselves back up and running. If you did have get back up and running and, you know, be set up and ready for a couple of weeks time. So that's been this week's first, very easy, slowly picking up the pace.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Episode of 2025. Delighted to be back, delighted to be bringing you new episodes every week and, yeah, looking forward to next week's one. It's a really interesting one and I think it's one that you'll all enjoy. It's one I recorded back in early december and special guests. So, yeah, looking forward to that one and uh, yeah, that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and I'll tell you next time. Happy gardening, thank you.