January 2025 Gardening Advice

Red Twig Dogwood gives your landscape a beautiful splash of color in winter. Photo credit: Famartin, wikimedia commons.

by Jennifer Fairfield, Garden Mill

This year, I am resolving to spend more time in my gardens. While that may seem like an easy New Year’s resolution for me to keep, it’s not as easy as it sounds. There always seems to be something else that needs to be done that keeps me from getting out in my yard and gardens. So, I’m making a resolution now to set aside significant time every week for doing something involving gardening. Every Week – including during the winter, because gardening doesn’t necessarily stop just because it’s cold out. I’ll let you know how my resolve holds up!

To start out my New Year’s resolution on the right foot, here’s what I’m going to be doing this month. Feel free to join me!

Indoors:

• I got my first seed catalog on Tuesday, which means it’s time to start planning what I want to grow this coming season. I love going through the catalogs to see if there’s anything new or different I might want to grow. I don’t know about you, but I tend to grow the same stuff every year, mostly because I know that I like it and it will get eaten or enjoyed for its beauty. Sometimes, though, it’s fun to grow something new, so going through the catalogs is a great way to get ideas. I don’t generally buy my seeds from the catalogs though. It’s probably no surprise that I get most of my seeds from the Garden Mill, but I also like to peruse the seeds available in other stores in the area. It’s a way for me to support the local gardening industry, helping to keep it going strong in our area.

• Before I buy any new seeds, I will go through the seeds I have left over from last year. Seeds are generally good for at least a couple of years, so I’ll use up what I have first, and fill in with what I am out of or what new seeds I want to try. I do try to make a list of what I need and what I want to look for before I head out to the stores, but if I’m honest, I often stray from that list. I never fail to find some variety that I just can’t resist – or a few varieties!
• One thing to keep in mind about older seeds – as they age, their germination rates go down, so you may not get as many seedlings coming up as you expect. When starting old seeds, I usually plant more than I would with new seeds, just to be sure that I get as many plants as I need. If I end up with more than expected, I can always share with friends!
• Along with thinking about what seeds I want for the upcoming season, I like to take some time to think about how last year’s gardening season went – did my cucumbers succumb to downy mildew too early to produce many fruits? Did the squash borers take out my zucchini before I could get my usual crazy numbers? Did my eggplants need more time to produce more than one or two fruits? Did I lose most of my carrots because I forgot to water them enough when they were germinating? Hint- the answer to all of these is yes! On the other hand, did I get more tomatoes than we could ever possibly use? Well, no! That never happens, though my plants sure did try this year! Depending on a lot of things, I might decide to try different varieties of plants. For instance, I might want to try a cucumber that is more resistant to downy mildew – though to be honest, I absolutely love the variety of cucumber that I grow (Renee’s Garden ‘Chelsea Prize’), so I’ll always grow them. I just need to be better about spraying fungicide early and often to keep the disease at bay. Maybe I don’t need to plant as many tomato plants this year? Ok – that’s probably not gonna happen either! The idea here is to make notes of what did well, what didn’t do well, and why. Then, I can make a plan for how to change the outcome this year. One thing I know I need to do this year is to start my eggplants sooner than I did last year, so they have a good head-start on the season. Eggplant needs a long, hot season to produce, which is not something we generally have in Michigan. Putting in plants that are a little farther along can help to compensate for our shorter growing season. Making notes of all of the things I need to take into consideration will help me get more out of my garden this year.
• I have a number of houseplants that need some TLC, and given that I likely won’t be doing as much outdoors in the next couple of months, I can spend some time giving the indoor plants the attention they don’t generally get during the outdoor season. Now’s a good time for me to re-pot the ones that have outgrown their pots. Others need to be trimmed back or separated because they’re getting too big for the space they’re in. Some of them could stand a good dusting to help them take advantage of what sunlight we see at this time of year.
• I won’t be fertilizing my indoor plants during the winter, because they need a resting period to allow them to concentrate on root growth, rather than foliage and flowers, for a little while.

Outdoors:

• This month, I’ll bundle up and take a walk around my yard to see how my yard and gardens look in winter, as well as to make note of things that I might need to address later in the year. I know I’ve got a shrub that isn’t getting as much sun as I thought it would when I planted it, so I should consider moving it in the spring to somewhere it will be happier. There’s one patch of my yard where the grass just refuses to grow, so maybe I need to think about putting something else there that will like the conditions, or maybe I can find a way to improve the soil conditions so that the grass will like it. My two native plant beds are totally out of control because I didn’t make the time to thin out some of the plants last year. Making a note now of what needs to come out will help me have a plan for what to do in the spring – which will help it not feel so overwhelming – as well as to remember all the things I need to do when outdoor gardening season begins.
• I also want to see if there are things I can do in the spring and summer to improve the look of my yard over the winter. Is there a spot I look out onto from my windows that could use a little color to break up all the brown in the winter? That might be a good place to put some Red Twig Dogwood. With the leaves down from the deciduous trees, is there a little too much of a direct line of sight between my house and my neighbor’s house? Maybe that’s a good spot for a new evergreen. My list is going to be really long! It’s a good thing I’m resolving to spend more time working outdoors this year.
• For a number of reasons, January is the perfect time to do whatever pruning my trees and shrubs might need. First, because the leaves have fallen, it’s easier to see the shape of trees and determine what branches might need to be trimmed to give them better shape. Also, because trees are dormant, pruning now won’t be stimulating them to put out new growth right away. That can happen when pruning in the spring, and since we often get late frosts, that new growth can be damaged before it has a chance to harden off.
• Another reason to prune now, especially for oak trees, is that pests aren’t active now. For oak trees, that’s important because insects can carry Oak Wilt disease from tree to tree. I won’t be pruning my early-spring-blooming flowering trees and shrubs this month, unless I need to remove damaged or dead branches. That’s because those plants bloom on buds that set last summer, so pruning them now would mean I’d get fewer blooms this spring. Those will wait until after they have bloomed to be pruned.
• I missed the opportunity to plant some more spring-blooming bulbs while the temperatures were so unseasonably warm in a couple of weeks ago, mostly because I was at the store. I have about 100 daffodils I want to plant along the fence line that borders my driveway, so I’m hoping that we’ll get one of our typical “January Thaws” that I can take advantage of to get those in. I also need to finish screening my evergreen shrubs with burlap to protect them from the cold winds over the winter. That task might have to happen in the cold though, because we’re apparently expecting some pretty chilly weather over the next couple of weeks, and I don’t want them to suffer through that with no protection.

Birds:

• With all the cold weather they’re threatening us with over the next couple of weeks, I need to get outside right now and fill up my bird feeders. My birds will need all the energy that food can give them to help them keep warm in the freezing cold.
• I also need to get the de-icer out of storage and put it in my birdbath so that the birds will have a source of water for drinking over the winter. I guess I’d better get out there!

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.