CHAPTER XV
CALENDAR OF WORK
January.
Unless you live in a warm corner of these islands and have a sunny garden, you will not be able to do much this month. If you have any empty ground it should be dressed with manure, dug on a mild day, and left with a rough surface. The frosts then help to break it up, and when spring comes it will be powdery and friable.
Fruit-trees should be dusted after a slight rain with slaked lime or fresh soot, as this kills moss, lichen, and the insect pests that lodge in the rough places of the bark.
Iris Stylosa should be flowering now in the South of England, and even in colder climates under a south wall. Slugs are fond of these plants, and eat them up when they are in bud. If you notice that this is happening, you must dust with wood-ashes or soot. Gather the flowers with a sharp upward jerk when in tight bud, and put them in a room in tepid water to expand.
Snowdrops, Winter Aconites, Crocuses, Squills, early Daffodils, and Grape Hyacinths will all begin to push towards the light this month. When they are growing in heavy soil that cakes badly, you help them by carefully loosening it a little with a hand-fork. You must not do this in frosty weather.
All delicate plants will need protection now. A piece of rough matting supported by sticks at the comers is enough for many things. It is not a bad plan first to stretch a piece of wire-netting across the sticks and fasten it securely. By day it lets in light and air, and at night the mat or sacking is easily thrown over it. If ever you are on the Riviera you will see the gardeners put their plants to bed every evening as carefully as if they were children, while in this country, where much cold is expected, you see numbers of plants in any well-tended garden protected the whole winter with coverings of bracken or matting. When the plant you want to protect is below ground (a delicate bulb or tuber, for instance, or one that quite dies down in winter), you need only pile on manure or ashes or dead leaves to act as a blanket. We know someone who grew tuberoses successfully out of doors in a Cornish garden, and in the winter he protected them with little heaps of ashes, which he did not remove till the May frosts were over. In most parts of England manure is used as a protection for Roses and slightly delicate climbers; but a skilful gardener will shelter many of his delicate plants with little tents that he makes of twigs and bracken. We have seen them all shapes and sizes in a North Country garden where many rare things are grown. Some enclosed the plant altogether, and some gave it shelter, but let in sun and air on the south side.
This is the month when seed lists arrive, and remind you that spring is coming. Remember that it is easier to buy seeds than to grow them well, and do not order more than you have room for, or any requiring conditions you cannot give them.