January Garden Calendar
Old Man Winter Strikes Again!
Your January garden calendar is a busy one, and an important one to fulfilling the structures of your landscape design. First and foremost, be aware of the dangers of freezing and frost, and take the precautions needed to protect your tender plants from frost and cold weather. While it may not be attractive, being able to put a sheet of poly over a frame to let decomposing compost and mulch and plant aspiration can keep delicates like lily beds from suffering too much from a cold snap which can happen in your January garden calendar.
If you can't do that, the afternoon before a frost warning, be sure to water everything well. Plants cope with freezing temperatures by using systolic action to circulate water through cell membranes; having more water flowing makes it harder for any of it to freeze.
Pruning Tasks: Clear Out the Old to Make Way for the New
Another task to put on your January garden calendar is pruning and clearing things out from the beds. Most fruiting plants should be pruned at this time of the year, and so should most rose bushes. Pruning at this time of the year, when the plants are dormant, is the most effective way to open up their centers, and to clear away the limbs that aren't serving the purpose you want. If you're pruning fruit trees, be aware that peaches and nectarines fruit on last year's new wood; it's not unheard of to remove more than half the branches in a pruning operation. Also use this opportunity to look for signs of disease or parasitic infestations.
While you're clearing out the detritus of pruning, it's also time to add cleanup chores.
This is the time to clear away dead foliage and petals, which can harbor fungal pests, and to lay down a new layer of mulch. Protective applications of anti-fungal sprays are a topic of much debate, since they're most effective at this time of year, and most likely to be washed away by a rainfall. (For California, nearly 20% of the annual rainfall happens in the first month of the year.) Likewise, this is not the time to apply any kind of fertilizer; all it will do is add to the runoff creating river algae and red blooms in the oceans. If you do spray, choose a day that's 45 degrees or warmer, and one where you aren't going to have rainfall for the next two days. You want something that will clear away dormant mold spores and the egg cases of over-wintering insects.
Bare Roots Planting: Now's The Time
One of the nicest parts of landscape design that fit nicely into a January garden calendar is doing bare roots planting; once the nurseries have cleared out of the Christmas stock, they start showing off the bare root plants you'll want to add to your landscaping endeavors, such as fruit trees, grapes, deciduous trees and shrubs, and of course, grade one roses and other perennials.
Other root plants that work well for this include strawberries and raspberries. This is also the time to assess where wind and water flow patterns have altered in your landscape design from where it was originally planned out, and planting new trees will force an assessment of that. Be sure to get trees with a trunk diameter between 0.5" and 0.625". When installing in trees, keep wind flow patterns in mind, and try to make sure that trees are planted in pairs, to let easy pollination happen. Lastly, when scheduling your blooms, remember that many plants bloom in the January garden calendar, most of them dry climate species like aloe and eucalyptus, euryops, coloenema and several other varieties. One of the arts of landscape design is making sure that every month has something blooming and on display. Keeping in mind that citrus is as decorative as any flower, citrus is a good choice for something to add to a landscape design plan for January decoration. In general, the smaller varieties of fruits, like kumquats, are hardier and better able to survive a cold snap in the midst of your January garden calendar planning.
Back to Fine Gardening. Thank you for checking out the January Garden Calendar.
International Landscape Association consisting of Landscape Architects, Contractors and Industry Related Professionals in California including the San Francisco County, Contra Costa County, Blackhawk, Fremont, Marin County, Larkspur, Kentfield, Belvedere, Tiburon, Greenbrae, Piedmont, Mill Valley, Oakland, Piedmont, Berkeley, San Mateo County, San Jose, Milpitas, East Foothills, Milpitas, San Martin, Los Angeles, Hidden Hills, Rolling Hills, Montecito, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Santa Barbara, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Bel Air, San Marino, La Canada Flintridge, Thousand Oaks, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Holmby Hills, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Orange County, Newport, Coto de Caza, Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Orange, Mission Viejo, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Tustin, Yorba Linda, San Diego, La Jolla, Coronado, Rancho Santa Fe, Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Fairbanks Ranch, Carlsbad, Del Mar and Encinitas to name a few...
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