101 Gardener’s Resolutions and Plans

101 Gardener’s Resolutions and Plans

Wild meadow

Plant and Floral Resolutions

  • Grow the plants and flowers you like.
  • Grow more flowers for cutting.
  • Grow plants for shape, texture and form.
  • Tie to supports Clematis, Chimonanthus and Climbing Roses to prevent wind damage and improve flowering.
  • Increase the planting of scented Witch Hazel (eg. Hamamellis x intermedia Jelena).
  • Sow Sweet Peas in deep pots and pinch out the tips when they have 5 leaves.
  • Plan how the colour of flowers will look when planted. Use single colours rather than mixed seed packets.
  • Collect and replant or distribute the seed from your own star plants.
  • Grow plants that contribute over long periods of the year.
  • Select and grow a shock and awe plant.

Eco and Environmental Resolutions

  • Remember we must leave this environment for future generations.
  • Grow fewer varieties but focus on nectar and pollen rich flowers that are local and help wild life.
  • Improve soil with rotted compost and try not to compact the air out of wet soil by walking on it.
  • Increase water collection and storage with linked butts or new collection points.
  • Fumigate the greenhouse to get rid of fungal spores and overwintering pests
  • Provide a range of different bird foods to attract various species. Blackbirds love a bit of a bite of an apple.
  • Keep lawn edges neat and trimmed but have natural areas for wild grass and flowers.
  • Use natural fertiliser and non-chemical controls.
  • Reuse and repurpose old items rather than sending them to the tip.
  • Use local and natural stone for your construction work. Airmiles on Indian paving and energy used to manufacture composition paving slabs are unnecessary uses of resources.

General Gardening Resolutions

  • Reduce the size of plant clumps and shrubs and trees that are beginning to take over their allotted spot.
  • Deadhead faded flowers to extend flowering time.
  • Prune and trim when plants need it not just when you have the secateurs in your hand.
  • Sow seeds thinly and thin out. Give plants appropriate space.
  • Make succession sowings, only sow small quantities of a crop at each sowing.
  • Split clumps of Snowdrops and Winter Aconites after flowering. They split best ‘in the green’.
  • Create a low maintenance area to spend time elsewhere in the garden.
  • Take full enjoyment out of your garden.
  • Listen to advice but do as you please.
  • Work with the weather it is all you’ll get.

Houseplants and Indoor Pots

  • Check plants for pests before bringing them into your home.
  • Keep Azalea and Cyclamen pot plants moist at all times.
  • Flowering plants need bright light so position accordingly.
  • Repot plants into larger pots if have consumed the compost or are in need of space.
  • Add fresh compost to the top of pots when the houseplants are not growing as strongly.
  • Keep pots of bulbs and flowering plants cool to prolong the life of the flowers.
  • Many houseplants will benefit from some time outside in the middle of summer.
  • Water the plants not the windowsills.
  • Move plants around in the home.
  • Try the exotic not the commonplace.

Win Friends and Influence People

  • Grow more flowers and greenery for cutting and flower arranging. It should please those indoors
  • Grow pots and containers of plants to give away. It is an easy way to use your surplus.
  • Sharpen your blades and tools using a sharpening stone and wipe over with oil
  • Look at your garden from your boundary and aim for at least one crowd pleasing feature for passers by to admire.
  • Join your local horticultural society, you will get advice, make friends and may be offered free or cheap produce.
  • Use the RHS and AGS for information and join these societies if you want to use the benefits of membership.
  • Plant to visit flower shows and open gardens to see how the professionals design and execute a garden scheme.
  • Beg cuttings or advice from other gardeners, they are usually a friendly bunch. I was once told ‘Everyone is entitled to my opinion’.
  • Enter your local village show. It is the taking part that is important not the winning.
  • Keep your boundary and pavements neat and tidy. Pick up litter and kill off weeds outside your house to make the street a better place to live.

Allotment Focused Resolutions

  • Get an allotment!
  • Alternatively increase cultivated area by a deal with a neighbor
  • Mastered the art of successional sowing to avoid gluts.
  • Grow more winter crops
  • Store potatoes, butternut squashes, onions and shallots.
  • Pick courgettes and runner beans regularly.
  • Protect against carrot root fly, cabbage white butterfly and Pigeons before it is too late.
  • Get more manure to hearten up the soil.
  • Talk to other allotmenteers about successes and failures of the past
  • Grow what the family will eat.

Gardeners Tips Resolutions

  • Read Gardeners Tips regularly
  • Subscribe to gardeners tips RSS feed
  • Get Gardeners tips by email.
  • Buy from Jersey Plants or Thompson Morgan by using Gardeners tips links.
  • Comment on Gardeners tips.
  • Link your web site to Gardeners tips.
  • Advertise on Gardeners tips.
  • Tell your friends about Gardeners tips.
  • Nominate the best resolution from the list of 101 Gardeners tips new year’s resolutions
  • Did I mention Gardeners tips for the best gardening tips?

Fruit and Vegetable Resolutions

  • Grow more fruit and disbud so that apples, pears and plums grow to a good size.
  • Grow early potatoes in containers or sacks such as International Kidney or Vales Emerald for something newer.
  • Start chillie seeds early on a sunny windowsill.
  • If I grow Chard Bright Lights in a decorative bed I must remember to eat the crop not just look at it.
  • Two or three Marrow plants can provide all the courgettes a family needs. Try Defender or Green Bush
  • Reshape old Apple trees during winter by pruning to get a bowl shape that lets in air and light.
  • Divide congested clumps of Rhubarb .
  • Feed the area around the roots of fruit trees.
  • Consider more space for fruit such as Stone fruit, Bush fruit, Cane fruit, Soft fruit and Apple and Pear trees.
  • Add lime to the soil where you plan to grow brassicas and leafy greens.

Fun Resolutions

  • Give me patience but hurry!
  • Apply perspiration in the garden regularly.
  • If it dies its a flower if it lives its a weed.
  • With a flower in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.
  • Have pride in how bad your hands look.
  • Learn by by trowel and error.
  • The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and brown sauce.
  • It is knowledge to know Tomato is a fruit but wisdom to stop putting it in a fruit salad.
  • Go to the Yorkshire garden center where you can buy one – get one
  • Grow your own dope … plant a man.

Restate the Blinking Obvious

    • Do more weeding.
    • Cut the grass regularly.
    • Keep everything tidy.
    • Water deeply when needed.
    • Excel with the plants you already grow.
    • Kill insects that cause damage.
    • Stop infectious rot and disease.
    • Turf out the dead and dying.
    • Nature causes living things to suffer and die.

 

  • Do not believe all you read in lists like this.

 

 

 

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