Ready for winter
By Mary Whiting, keen gardener and early years consultant Winter is the time to review the past year and plan the next. Remind the children, perhaps with photographs, of their garden's success and fun. You might want to extend the garden area next year and perhaps grow a wider range of vegetables and flowers. Or you might want to create a variety of 'play gardens' (see the 'All about gardening', 5 January 2006).
You might also like an area of attractive flowering plants that will flourish with very little attention. If so, try sedum, Japanese anemones, crocosmia, white phlox, polygonums, various cranesbills, catmint, golden rod, hyssop, the curry plant (Helichrysum italicum), winter-flowing jasmine and schizostylis, or the low-growing, golden evergreen 'emerald 'n' gold'.
Just make sure the shorter plants are in the front! The easiest vegetables are potatoes, chard, spinach beet, runner beans and broccoli. They'll need sun, and water in dry weather, especially the beans, but will grow almost anywhere, and apart from the potatoes they will self-seed. Chives, marjoram, sage, lemon balm and wild strawberries also grow readily.
Outdoors
* Plant big clumps of tulips now in frostproof pots.
* Plant garlic cloves, 3cm deep, 15cm apart. Separate the cloves from the bulb at the last moment.
* Show the children the wonderful dark, crumbly compost made from the scraps they saved. If you haven't begun a second heap yet (a bottomless dustbin will do), start one now, and leave the first heap to finish rotting down for spring. Beware of overwhelming the heap with citrus peel or the acidity will deter worms.
* Keep checking for whitefly and late caterpillars on cabbage and broccoli plants. Covering them with horticultural fleece helps keep off insects and pigeons.
* Keep searching out slugs and snails under leaves and stones, and remove any clutter where they could over-winter and breed. Scattering bran around plants gives some protection.
Indoors
* Make a festive and spectacular evergreen display of rosemary, bay, eucalyptus and spruce: arrange in brown glass jars standing on, and in front of, red tinfoil.
* Sprout tops of carrot, parsnip, beetroot, celeriac in saucers of water.
* Sprout avocado stones and make an avocado forest.
* Save cardboard rolls cut into short lengths for free seedpots next spring.
* Remember to recycle your Christmas tree after the holidays.