Sowing Seeds in January

The sun’s out, there’s blue skies, it’s January and I’m having to sit on my hands.

At this time of year it is always so difficult to avoid getting spring excited. As the new year rolls in it seems as if warm weather and the gardening season is only just around the corner. In actual fact, there remain several months of winter ahead.

Though the majority of sowing has to wait to avoid cluttered windowsills full of leggy, fragile seedlings, there are still plants you can get underway now. So instead of having a sow-a-thon, I’m limiting my jobs to a few things.

JANUARY VEGETABLE SOWING

Unless you’ve got indoor space with warmth to aid growth and lights to extend the hours of daylight, there aren’t many things you can get going without running out of room before you can safely transplant seedlings outside.

BROAD BEANS

I’ve only once successfully grown overwintering broad beans. This type was aquadulce claudia. This variety works well in a cold climate but I’ve found with the seasonal fluctuations over the past few years, it’s often not cold enough for an extended period of time. The result is that the broad beans grow extremely well in the mild weather but then get frosted off by a late cold snap.

So instead of planting my broad beans directly into the soil in November or December, I know pop them into plug trays during January, place them in the polytunnel or greenhouse whilst they grow and establish good root growth and then plant them out, after acclimatising them, around March.

Yes, this results in a later crop but I find they’re more likely to survive. I also put the modules out of reach from rodents until they’ve germinated otherwise you can find that half if not more, get chomped by voles and mice.

LETTUCES

The majority of lettuces, even the winter varieties, do not do a lot of growing over the colder seasons. In fact, most of the overwintering varieties simply survive cold weathers rather than actively grow. In January I like to start a few lettuces to sell at early markets as ‘baby lettuce’. I’ve started a tray of salad bowl red and salad bowl green. These are just left in the polytunnel to germinate naturally and they’ll produce enough small green leaves for an early spring harvests ahead of larger summer lettuces.

CHILLIS / PEPPERS / AUBERGINES

Chllies, peppers and aubergines are all extremely long-to-maturity crops. That means they take an age to grow and produce decent harvests. If, therefore, you begin your seeds in March and something happens, there’s no chance to start another batch.

For that reason I like to start these three vegetable seeds off in January. The need a heat matt and can take up to three weeks to germinate. I find the easiest way to germinate my seeds is on damp kitchen towel. I then transplant them into modules. You’ll also need to provide them with ambient heat and growlights if you want to get the seedlings to grow and bush up to a decent size before transplanting later in the year.

JANUARY FLOWER SOWING

SWEET PEAS

Sweet peas are a great overwintering flower and will happily sprout, grow and then sit and wait when the cold weather arrives. Like the broad beans though, I find that fluctuating winters these days means there isn’t often a consistently cold season which means they grow too much before you can plant them out.

For this reason, I soak the peas for 24 hours and then sow them in the middle of January. They’ll germinate quite quickly and then you can pinch out over the coming couple of months to create bushy plants. They’ll be then ready to transplant into their growing space come spring.

SPRING BULBS

It’s not too late to get spring flowering bulbs in during January. The main reason for starting them in autumn is to allow a little root growth, but there’s no reason you can’t pick up some cheap bulbs in January and get them in. The longer you wait, however, the more likely you’ll just get leaves over flowers, so any bulbs you have, get them into the ground as quickly as possible.

RANUNCULUS / ANEMONES

Like bulbs, ranunculus and anemones should ideally be planted in autumn and overwintered for a large, successful harvest. But it’s not too later to soak your corms in January and get them into some soil. This is especially true if you pop your planted corms in a polytunnel or greenhouse so they’re a little sheltered and can begin to grow more quickly.

These flowers love the cold and will quickly go over if it becomes too warm. So soak the corms, plant them up and soon they’ll be flowering in April and May.

For the past week, the above seeds have been my little day-to-day gardening chores. It’s exciting to be getting started ahead of the season, and there’s that brilliant feeling of achievement of completing a job. So though we have to sit on our hands for the majority of this month, there’s still some fun sowing we can enjoy as the slivers of springtime hope begin to enter our souls.