This week I spread triple super phosphate around blooming trees, shrubs and flowers. I also spread lime, phosphate, potash and leaves on my veggie garden and got it tilled yesterday before the rain today. I limed my butterfly bushes and lilacs---generally just messing around so I can be outside. If I come inside then I realize I should be spending my time cleaning house. YUCK!

I plant things in my mind for next year but when spring
gets here, I will have forgotten, so since one cancels
the other out I guess I do nothing.
Norm

I am cleaning it up. Cutting back old foliage and such as that. I'm also still planting bulbs ! I'll just get them all planted , then mom will hit a bulb sale and give me another bag full LOL.

FREEZING!!!

Honestly, I've WANTED to get out and do things like cut brush, dig out dormant weeds, work up a new bed, etc.---but it's been so BLOODY cold I haven't been able to stand it!!! I really NEED our usual bright, sunny, 45-50 degree, NON-WINDY December!

MsBatt (huddling in her greenhouse)

Pretty much everything is done for the winter and put to bed. My neighbors have some giant pin oaks so I'll be picking up leaves till March.

I am doing the same thing as SmokyMist - - cleaning up beds!

I just got up all the rootballs on large tropicals that I am not overwintering, and have lots of dead foliage that I need to cut back. Hubby mulches our leaves for me, and most of my beds will receive a layer of leaf mulch to keep down the weeds, as well as to enrich the soil.

I am also tending to all the many tropicals and cuttings that I have to keep growing inside. Keeping them watered, sprayed, rotated, and cleaned up - - is fairly labor intensive!

Plus, I just received adenium seeds from Thailand last week that I will be starting this week. I have to have a few babies to attend to during the gloom of winter.

Right now I am doing more indoor than outdoor gardening. The citrus trees and potted herbs have all come inside for the winter. Today I picked limequats and noticed the Meyer lemon has gotten a lot of buds.

There are about a dozen limequats, and I am very pleased for it being the first harvest. Will probably make some Christmas candy from them using a recipe for Kumquat Chips.

We're a brave bunch aren't we?! Either that or obsessed.

I'm trying to put together to-do lists for my website for these winter months and it's hard to find as many to-do's as there are days in the month in December, January, and February. I came up with 31 for Dec., but I'm having a hard time for next month.

Will y'all help me brainstorm??? What might we consider doing even remotely garden related in January? February is not quite so difficult, but it'll be an effort still.

Help! I've been working on the January to-do-list for my website and I've only come up with 25 things, and some of those are a stretch - even to-not-dos. Can you help me think of a few more things to add?

Here is a link that might be useful: January To-Do List

Virginia, I briefly read thru some of you list and found something you should change. You said to drain the gas from your mower. This is likely to cause more damage than good. The problem with leaving gas in a small engine is that the gas will leave residue that can stop up the small pores of the carburetor. Unfortunately the problem becomes even worse when vapor left in the carb, when you drain the gas out, dries and leaves even more varnish than if you had left the gas. If you are worried about this, I would get Briggs & Stratton fuel stabilizer. This is a mineral based stabilizer and works much better than the alcohol based versions. This will elliminate the old gas turning to varnish problem. I use this product year round and highly recommend it. I used to run a power equipment business and we had quite a bit more repairs due to people draining their gas than we saw from people leaving the gas in and letting it get old.

Brandon, thanks for the tip. I told my husband and he already knew, but I didn't. I've changed the page and added your recommendation.

Now everybody else, I've scratched and scrabbled and come up with 31 to-do's (or not). Check my list in the link above. These are not written in stone, and I'm up for suggestions if you can think of anything else garden-related that really should be done in January.

Mostly I am wandering around my yard trying to decide what my goals are for next year. I'm also cleaning up things, like broken branches & twigs that have dropped during windy days.

My walnut trees have left dozens and dozens of walnuts all over the gorund. I'm throwing these alongside the fences so they won't make walking and mowing harder. The most satisfying thing though is peering at each plant every day to see what it is doing in preperation for spring. Little nubs EVERYWHERE--yeah!

I have put leaves all over my beds, but now I want to move them aside and let the sun hit the earth. I worry this would be too early though, so I'm waiting. I would like to plant poppies soon. Last year I had the most wonderful success with them. I have a big open space I might just devote to the poppies. They seem to grow so well here & the colors are spectacular. Unfortunately, I had no idea how big they would get! I had to pull the plants up after they bloomed. I tossed them out, but regret this now, thinking maybe I just should have replanted them. Will poppies come up in the old place anyway?

I guess that's part of the thrill--wondering what surprises will come with Spring.

I'm off to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks. Everyone says the flowers there are incredible. I'm sure when I get home my fingers will be itching to get into the soil here at home. Happy spring everyone! The plants seem certain it is not far away.

I've been doing the same kinds of things... picking up sticks and twigs, raking leaves off of lawn areas and groundcovers at the edges of my beds, and pulling up privet and oak seedlings and other evergreen and winter annual weeds that are easy to spot now. Hopefully, there will be fewer next year if I remove them before they flower and go to seed. I haven't seen Crocus yet, but that's probably because they're planted under monkey grass and it hasn't been cut that back yet. If you're seeing it, then that means it's time for me to get out clippers and get to work or I'll end up cutting off Crocus foliage along with the Liriope.

I had good luck with Poppies last spring too. If you didn't pull yours up until after they had produced seed and haven't mulched the ground where they were last year, they might come back. Most people sprinkle Poppy seeds and other cool season annuals like Bachelor Buttons directly in the garden in late fall. But, Poppies are among the easiest seeds to WinterSow and that is how I started mine last year. If you didn't save Poppy seeds from last year, order them now (or trade for some on the GW Seed Exchange), because they need to be planted while it's still cold - like now. Poppies don't like to be transplanted, so if you do start them in containers, don't attempt to separate out individual seedlings, but just break apart the clump into pieces about the size of a nickel and get them in the ground while they're still small. If you sow them in 4-inch square containers, you should get at least 16 clumps from each.

Hope you have a wonderful trip to Costa Rica. It's supposed to be a beautiful country. By the time you return, Spring will be just around the corner.

Last week I planted a box full of saffron crocus that had somehow missed getting planted in the fall - 100 of them. Not sure how they will do, but I will cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Mostly I am perusing the gardening catalogues and making planting plans.

Virginia, I looked at your list. It looks great! Perhaps you might be interested in this info: Taking down the decorations on New Year's Day is not really a tradition all over the south. When we were growing up the tradition (that we still continue) is to take the tree down on 12th Night/6 January.

In our family the cut tree was always set up outside (usually tied to a fence or something) where it could easily be seen from the house, and decorated for the birds, with suet, birdseed decorations, etc. This bird tree tradition in our family actually started when my great-grandmother (were she still alive she'd be 106) was a little girl and had scarlet fever. They thought she was going to die and set up the bird tree to cheer her up and give her something beautiful to see. She made it through the illness and the bird tree was given a lot of credit. They kept doing one every year. My grandmother, my mom and I all grew up putting one up each year after 12th Night. When my girls were small we invited all the neighborhood children to come take part in fixing the bird tree. This weekend we will be undecorating and putting up a bird tree even though one daughter is off at college and the other nearly grown. :-)

Decolady, that's a wonderful tradition! For some reason Sunday didn't feel much like New Year's Day without the Rose Bowl Parade to watch while taking down the tree so we didn't get ours down until Jan 2.

Did anyone see Paul James' show this morning? He had good suggestions for things to do in the off-gardening season. I took notes and will add them to the February list when I get around to writing it.

Yesterday I moved a bunch of cannas & a hibiscus out of a flower bed. The bed was getting to crowded so I moved them to my vegetable garden & will share them with a friend who has moved from Florida and doesn't have any flowers in her yard. I've planted bulbs along my new picket fence my husband build for our anniversary & I've made some pinecones covered with peanut butter & bird seeds to hang in a bush outside our kitchen door so we can watch the birds. The first two days of the new year my husband & I went for a motorcycle ride since the weather was like spring - yeah! Also, we've cleaned up the yard of twigs to use as kindling for the insert in our fireplace and did some wood chopping.