New Year Gardening Jobs

Now that it's 2013 and we've all hopefully had great New Year's celebrations and wonderful Christmas too, it is time to get back into the swing of things and prepare the garden for the coming Spring.

Clean Up Your Greenhouse 

 

This is definitely the best time to clean your greenhouse out ready for when you begin growing in there. The same goes for cold frames or mini growhouses too. The easiest way is to wipe the glass down with some warm soapy water and then squeegee it off and it should be clear.

Doing this will mean that you will be prepared and the job will be done ready for you concentrate on sorting out your plants to be grown.

The Compost Bin

 

If you don't have a compost bin, then you should set one up now, there are many available from simple wooden slot together composters to the more durable plastic composters, you could even build your own if you wanted to. It's a great place to put all the waste from the garden which will be created throughout the year like for example weeds and grass cuttings.

Feed The Birds!

 

If you are a bird lover, then you will want to put out some bird feed for them, as food is scarce at this time of the year, so put out some fat balls for the birds to graze on during this hard time for them to get some much needed nutrients.

Plan For The Year Ahead

 

If you start planning now, you will make it easier on yourself for the rest of the year as you will know what to do and when, there's no better time than new year to do this as it's like a fresh start for you. Planning will also mean you are more likely to carry things out as you will have a routine and will be more likely to stick at it, it's also a good reminder if you do forget soemthing.

January Pond Maintenance

A common question that we're asked here at UK Gardener's Blog is what do I do with my pond during the winter, especially New Year time, so we thought it would be time to give you an idea of what to do.

The first thing you will want to do is make sure you have some sort of pond heater available if you have aquatic life in the pond. These will not heat the entire pond, so don't worry about them being costly, they will just keep a small area free from ice depending on their size and this allows for oxygen to enter the water and harmful gases to escape too.

There are many pond heaters available on the market, and we aren't going to advise a specific one, but we do advise to look out for the ones with a thermostat built in. The reason that we say this is because these heaters will switch off when they know that the water isn't frozen, so you don't need to worry about switching it on and off, especially in the UK where we seem to have ice one day and the next it could be raining.

Sludge Removal With a Pond Vacuum

The next job that can be carried out during January is to vacuum your pond, this may sound strange if you are new to ponds but bear with us, a pond vacuum works by removing silt and sludge from your pond. The most common way a pond vacuum works is by sucking through an inlet hose into it's main chamber and then running through an outlet hose which will normally have a finely netted bag to catch the debris but let you pond water run back out.

The great thing about this is that you can vacuum your pond without having to remove the water permanently as it will be going back into the pond. The reason you vacuum your pond is to remove the silt and sludge which will build up and release toxins into the water leading to water pollution and this can cause harm to your aquatic life and plants too.

Pond Pump Maintenance

The final job of this month is to get your pond pump out and give it a good service, there are plenty of how to videos out there which will show you how to do this but you will want to do the following:

• Disconnect from the power source. This is vital, you do not want to be shocked.
• Remove your pump from the pond.
• Open the strainer cage, this is the cage with small holes to prevent large debris from damaging the pump.
• Once opened, give the cage a rinse through to remove any stuck on debris or blanketweed.
• Remove the impeller, this will usually depend on your make of pond pump, but there is normally a cap, also known as pump housing which holds the impeller in place and this will usually twist off.
• Take out the impeller and wipe it down to remove all algae and clean inside the pump where the impeller sits too.
• Now put the pump back together and place back into the pond and reconnect.

It's as simple as that, we advise that this kind of maintenance is carried out on your pond pump every couple of months just to ensure that it's running efficiently and will last for a lot longer too.

These are the jobs that we advise are carried out during January, of course if you'd like to there are other jobs that you can do, but these are the ones which are going to keep your pond running nicely into February and hopefully will stay that way all year round too.