January offers promise, after the bittersweet New Year when we tend to look back at everything we omitted to do in the previous 12 months.  When looking for promise in the depths of a wet winter, the garden is a good place to start.  We might be only just past the solstice, but it would be wrong to think of the garden as dormant. In the veg patch I am pleased to see the sharp darts of garlic offering the bold promise of spring in a few months. And there are flowers too, with hellebores providing splashes of colour as well as winter jasmine and an anonymous climber which has produced pretty white flowers for what seems the first time.

This year, more of the garden is being committed to flowers, with the Big Fat Somerset Wedding to plan for in July.  I started early and sowed a few rows of hardy annuals in October, but the results have been poor.  In contrast, the sweet peas that I sowed in November germinated well, but they have now been hit with damping off and I fear we are going to lose a lot of good seedlings out there.

So, it’s back to square one and I will sow all my annuals with spring in mind and ensure that they have the best possible of chance of hitting their straps by the time July looms.  To this end, I spent the last few days of the school holidays prepping the beds, taking out last year’s dead plants, spreading some fine horse manure and covering them with cardboard to keep the weeds down. 

Now, I just need to take another look at those seed catalogues….