December gardening tips From Barnsdale Gardens

Below, the Barnsdale team share their tips for creating a winter wonderland that you can be proud of!

Feed Flowering Houseplants

Regularly feed winter flowering houseplants with a houseplant food. This is high in potash and will encourage them into flower and then to produce more blooms throughout the winter. They don’t need so much water at this time of year, so be careful not to overwater.

Prune Wisteria

Now the leaves have turned yellow and started dropping off, it’s the perfect time to prune Wisteria. Earlier in the year we pruned all the shoots back to six buds and now we are going to half that growth and cut back every shoot to three buds from the previous year’s growth.

Plant Tulips

It’s been so wet recently that at Barnsdale the team haven’t been able to plant their tulips, but they can wait no longer – they’re going in! In order to minimise the impact on all the hard work involved in creating a good soil structure, the team are using a dibber.

Cover Ground for Early Crops

If you like to get some of your crops started early, such as multi-sown beetroot, carrots, leeks, turnips etc then you need to make sure it is possible. The only way to ensure the ground is in the condition you want it for planting, so not too wet, is to prepare it and then cover the area you need. When you’re ready you can remove the cover, be it a piece of polythene (for larger areas) or just a cloche, and get planting irrespective of what the weather has been like.

Store Leeks

There are some who refuse to do this, but if very cold weather is forecast it could be good to get a few leeks into a trench, just so that you can have them available when gardeners can’t even get their spade in the ground, let alone harvest their leeks. If the weather turns out not to be as severe as forecast then use them as and when required.

There's plenty to see and do all year round at Barnsdale Gardens!