It is hard to get enthusiastic about gardening in this weather: grey skies, wet underfoot and short days. Christmas lights, fires and festivities always seem like a great idea now!
If you check the weather forecast you will, however, discover that there is usually one bright day a week to enjoy: it is timing your time off that is the tricky part!
When you can get out into the garden there are a number of tasks that will make the coming months work easier to manage:
• Birches, vines and Japanese maples are best pruned at this time of year. Vines are less likely to bleed sap.
• Renovation of climbing roses is best done between now and February by thinning and reducing stems by approximately one third and taking out dead and diseased stems. Look up the RHS site for more details.
• Bare root trees and shrubs can be planted now. This is a very economical way of establishing hedges, especially as wildlife boundaries.
• With the chances of high winds growing more likely, it is sensible to ensure that all trees are properly tethered and climbers and cut back and tied in.
• Protect your outdoor taps from frost by covering them with hessian or bubble wrap: it is the expansion of the water when it turns to ice that bursts a pipe.
• A log or a football in a pond will prevent the total coverage of ice during a frozen spell. Ensure the log or football can be reached and removed!
• Be careful when you are tidying up a shed or having a bonfire: all sorts of creatures may be making their homes for the winter there.
• A stack of logs building materials (especially clay tiles and pipes) offer overwintering bugs a hotel for the cold months!
• Make sure outdoor taps are insulated against the frost, either by wrapping them in cloth, bubble wrap or by draining them and turning off their water supply
• Deciduous hedges such as beech and hornbeam can be renovated now. If drastic reduction is needed, then this task is best done over several winters
• Keep raking the leaves off the lawn as grass that does not get oxygen and light will soon become mouldy and start to deteriorate
• In order to improve drainage, use a fork to spike areas of the lawn that usually get flooded
• Hellebores that have very small flowers can be greatly improved by cutting off the leaves that obscure the flowers
• Prune open grown apples: refer to books or the net for more advice on this as the extent of pruning depends on the age and type of plant
• Add organic matter to heavy, claggy soil and let the worms do the work: they will be more far more effective than tramping and compressing the soil structure if you try to dig it when wet.
• Water evergreens in containers as wind can draw out a lot of moisture and dehydrate them.
I always feel a twinge of guilt when offered a mince pie and cream: not so when I have just been heaving plants, branches, soil and tools about. It is, after all, Advent – a time of waiting and preparing. We wait for the darkest days to pass, for the frantic shopping to pass, for the endless arrangements to come together, for the start of a new year, of new life and of new hope.
What is there not to like?