It doesn’t take much for me to start questioning my abilities as a GIYer at this time of the year.  I wander around my veggie patch, poking at kale plants with a stick and feeling mightily peeved that there’s nothing much worth eating.  Wondering – is there more I could have done?  The frustrating thing is that there’s very little we can do to remedy this problem until next month when the first tentative sowings of the year can commence. 

From this juncture – the miserable affair that is January with its depressingly short days and insipid sun - it seems like a long time since the garden was abundant and trips to the supermarket rare.  In times past they had a lovely expression for the interminable length of time between the last of last year’s produce and the first fresh crops of the year - it was called the hungry gap because back then people actually went hungry.  The good news is that each year as we learn more about GIYing the hungry gap gets shorter and shorter.  The 2011 seasons spreads out before us like a blank canvass – what GIY delights will you paint on yours?  Happy New Year from GIY.

Things to do this month

To Do

Plan!  This is a great month to decide where and what you are going to grow this year.  If you are just starting out join your local GIY group for some advice and check out our website for handy “getting started” guides and videos.  Consider building or buying some raised vegetable beds.  There’s still time to spread well-rotted manure or compost on your vegetable beds and cover them down with black polythene to start warming them up for spring sowing.  Start collecting old plastic bottles and containers as cloches and covers, and collect toilet roll inserts to use as pots for sowing.  Order your seeds, onions sets and seed potatoes.

Harvest

January is a lean month in your first few years of GIYing and it requires foresight the previous spring/summer to ensure that you have things worth eating at this time of the year.  You may have winter cabbage, perpetual spinach, chard, leeks, kale, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts in your veggie patch and depending on how successful your growing/storage regime last year was, you may well still be tucking in to stores of potatoes, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, onions, cauliflower, jerusalem artichokes, winter squash, pumpkins, leeks and red cabbage.