January Tips to Get the Most From Your Garden

January presents the perfect opportunity for you to give your garden a head start for the growing season and show it some of the TLC it needs. Lucky for us, we have a team of experts on hand in Glanbia who have a wealth of knowledge and products to make your growing season easier than ever before. Local horticulturalist Noel Leacy, who works in Glanbia, offered up a host of growing advice for this January that will help you get organised for the season ahead and ensure you have your best crops yet, whether you want to make your flower patches more beautiful or fill your vegetable garden with the very best of produce!

Potatoes

Potatoes are one of the easiest vegetables to grow outside, and January will see the first delivery of chitted potatoes. Rather than simply taking a spud from your vegetable rack, sticking it into the soil and expecting it to produce a decent crop, you need to buy what are called ‘seed’ potatoes. These are potatoes which have been specially grown to produce a true variety and will be certified as being disease-free at the time of purchase. The benefits of buying chitted potatoes from a local business like Glanbia is you are more likely to have a healthy crop of potatoes. These sprouted seed potatoes will give your crop a head start and reduces the amount of time you’ll have to wait before they are ready for harvest. The end of January or start of February is the perfect time to get your chitted potatoes planted and prepared for the season ahead. And first earlies can give you a crop as early as April!

Flowers

Winter is the perfect time to divide and tidy up your herbaceous perennials, give them a good mulch when done, and they are sure to put on a great display through summer. Start thinking about what summer flowering bulbs you want to plant in your garden and get your bare root flowering shrubs planted.

Growing Veg

It may still be a bit early for planting outside, but it is the perfect time to get your soil prepped! The most important thing about preparing your outdoor soil is that you do not over-rake or level the soil, as this will allow the weather to leech out nutrients needed to help your plants grow throughout the year. But you can dig over your soil and add in well rotted manure and fresh compost to build up the nutrition in your soil.

Traditionally seeds would have been a popular choice when it comes to growing veg, but the main disadvantage with this type of growing is that germination has a higher risk of failure, and the seeds would have to be well thinned out. So when the time comes to plant out your veg, plug plants are a great choice. Already germinated when bought, they give your crop a head start and have a much higher chance of survival. At the end of the month, Glanbia will be getting the first order of vegetable plug plants in stock to help you kick off the growing season.