Gardeners have a fantastic excuse for eating too much on Christmas Day, so we need the energy for our Boxing Day gardening! If you need some exercise to work off all that Christmas pudding, here are our top 6 gardening jobs for Boxing Day.
Top 6 gardening jobs for Boxing Day
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Sow onions. Traditionally, show growers always sow their onions on Boxing Day, giving them a good long growing season to develop into show-worthy giants. You don’t have to be a show grower to follow this tradition; it will provide you with an early harvest of onions in summer. Sow the seeds in modules in a propagator or a heated greenhouse, and plant them out in spring. Onion ‘Ailsa Crag’ and ‘Red Baron’ are excellent for winter sowing.
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Mulch your beds. One of the best things you can do for your garden is spread a thick (at least 5cm/2in) layer of organic material, such as well-rotted farmyard manure or garden compost, over any bare soil. Worms and other soil organisms will start to work it into the ground over winter, improving the soil structure. With a few years of annual mulching, your soil will drain better in wet weather and retain moisture better in dry periods.
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Make sure your garden wildlife is having a good Christmas too! Fill up bird feeders and bird baths, but take care when putting out any leftovers from your Christmas dinner. A little bit of fruit and some unsalted nuts are fine but don’t give birds any salty snacks or cooking fat (it smears on their feathers and is difficult for them to clean off).
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Give your sweet peas a head start. Sow sweet pea seeds in root trainers filled with seed compost, and place them in a heated greenhouse or propagator to germinate. Toilet roll cardboard tubes make great plastic-free root trainers, and you can plant the whole thing out in spring, leaving the cardboard to biodegrade in the soil.
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Rake fallen leaves off your lawn and collect them in a pile so that they can break down into leaf mould, one of the best soil conditioners there is. If you don’t have space for a leaf pile, put the leaves into black bin liners, make a few holes in the bags to allow air and water in and put them somewhere out of sight. The leaves take a year or two to break down, but the results are well worth it.
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Plan next year’s planting. If the weather’s too cold and miserable to make gardening enjoyable, now’s the time to start planning for next year. Get yourself a notebook and pen, a cup of tea and a mince pie, and let your dreams of the perfect garden start to take root!
Whatever you need to get your garden looking great this coming year, you’ll find it in our centre, so come and visit us!
