Gareth and Horticulture group with Kevin Gallinagh
January is a month that’s easy to slip by “There’s nothing to do in the garden”., “It’s too cold/wet to do anything” – both statements totally false.
There’s always stuff to be getting on with in the garden, however this time of year is all about forward planning, many jobs carried out now with reward you in the summer.
A timely job now is taking hardwood cuttings from dormant garden plants, Fruit Bushes and many deciduous garden shrubs and trees root well when cuttings are taken during this dormant time of year.
Just before we broke for Christmas we were starting to take many hundreds of hardwood cuttings from around the grounds of the ETB Training Centre with the Horticulture crew.
We have some struck outside in a ‘Nursery Bed’ – this is a raised bed with a good mix of Vermiculite mixed through the soil, and we have some in a planter box inside the polytunnel.
A happy Robert striking some hardwood rose cuttings
The plants in the polytunnel should root quicker due to the heat, but in turn they will need watered and some form of maintenance, whereas the ones outside are left to fend for themselves.
Whether inside or outside we have used a small dust of hormone rooting powder on the base of the stems, remember when using rooting powder you only need a small amount on the bottom of each stem, too much will inhibit rooting, so dip the end of your cuttings into the powder and then blow or flick of the excess.
Starting this week we’re sowing a selection of seeds in the polytunnel, for planting out later in the Spring. This week we’ll be sowing some onions seeds into modular cells, these will then be transplanted into the ground in mid April(ish), for an October(ish) harvest.
That’s one of the challenging things about gardening is that nothing is too exact, we can only ever estimate a likely harvest or sowing dates as of course the weather plays such an important part in the equation!
We’re also starting off some Chillies and Peppers from seed, but these will need to be started off in a Heated Propagator – I use a Vitopod Propagator, these are serious bits of kit and can be thermostatically set to the 22C needed for germination to take place. We need to get chillies started off early as they require a prolonged growing season, if we waited until May to sow we’d struggle to get them through to a crop – another that requires a long season is the humble Leek, sown in February these will reach a great size for Winter harvests!
Trays of Chilli seeds covered with cling film and placed on heated bench
Another job we tackled just before Christmas was some lawn renovation work within the ETB Training Centre. The lawns are a mess with moss, or maybe more truthfully the odd sprig of grass breaks up the blanket of Moss! Thankfully Kevin Gallinagh from Letterkenny Tool Hire brought down a selection of fantastic machines for the Horticulture crew to get some familiarity with – Kevin’s machine that Scarifies the lawns and his Hollow Tine Aerator are a joy to use, both powerful and effective machines.
In a matter of a few hours we had an area of 200m2 Scarified, Aerator and top-dressed with sand. Although looking terrible at the moment these works will create a much improved lawn come mid Spring when growth resumes. A job like this is well worth tackling during a dry spell in the winter months. I’ll post a few updated pics as this lawn renovation work continues.
