Tasks for December

Get seed beds ready for sowing in plenty of time and you'll steal a march on the season - especially if you use the 'stale seedbed' technique in which soil is covered with clear polythene from late winter. It's widely used by commercial market gardeners but can be easily adapted to home growing. Stale seedbeds harness and concentrate watery winter [...]

Harvest container-grown potatoes just in time for Christmas Day to enjoy that delicious home-grown flavour even in the depths of winter. Growing your own Christmas dinner has to be the ultimate achievement for ambitious veg gardeners, with a good yield of spuds top of the list. If you haven't planted Christmas spuds this year, make a note to treat yourself [...]

Do some armchair gardening if the weather is just too bad to do any work outside. Arm yourself with inspirational books from the huge range here at our garden centre plus a pencil and notebook for scribbles and sketches, and allow yourself to dream. Planning ahead and making lists of new plants and features for your garden next year helps get [...]

Plant a nut tree for an unusual and beautiful addition to your kitchen garden. Nuts make a change from the usual apples and pears, and with their delicate spring blossom and good autumn colour they're easily ornamental enough to provide a pretty focal point among perennials and shrubs. Plus you get a bumper harvest! Now is the perfect time to [...]

December's plant of the month is Sarcococca, better known as Christmas box. There are few better festive gifts from the garden on a crisp winter's day, too, as the air fills with rich, sweet perfume from its tiny, deceptively insignificant flowers. Both the main varieties, neatly domed S. confusa and S. hookeriana var. digyna with its more slender, pointed leaves, [...]

It may be chilly outside, but there's nothing like a bright, clear frosty morning to make you want to get out in the garden. There's plenty to be getting on with this month, too. General tasks: Cut back deciduous hedges reducing the top to about 60cm below where you want the eventual height to allow room for new growth. Feed [...]