It’s the second week of January and it’s been a mixed bag of weather. When it was reasonable I couldn’t get out in the garden as time was taken up with important matters. Then the rain came and made it very wet again. The garden is really very sodden even though the soil is quite light. Well, let’s see what the week ahead brings. Here’s my Six.

1) About three years ago I bought a pot of Crocosmia, it’s an orange colour but can’t remember the name. However, the Crocosmia are not doing well unless you can call the many swords of green leaves that are produced from the spring into summer. There’s not been any flower since the second year. So. this year is definitely the year to split the corms up and replant. There’s going to be many of these replant so I’m going to find room in the garden and perhaps some for the container they originally grew in. That’s my job for March, well okay one of the jobs for March.

Crocosmia sprouting and it’s only January

2) Basil as a culinary plant is used all year round which means most weeks we have bought basil from the veg section. Well, it can be somewhat a problem this time of year to get a good pot of basil mainly due to the weather being so cold. So I’ve decided to sow some this month and see how much of a challenge it will be. Back in June when I grew basil it was a brilliant success. The basil was of very good flavour, better than the shop bought basil. I’ll post how it’s getting on later on.

3) It’s been a while since I did anything but water the spider plant. However, it’s been very productive with its young spiderlets or is it spiderlings. Now it’s time to tidy things up a bit and have more spider plants around the house too. There’s a lot of these young spider plantlets, the picture doesn’t shown that there’s many more on the window sill.

4) With the spotlight on plastics and that we should reduce its use then we can all play our part in this ‘war on plastics’. As mentioned above we buy pots of basil but not only this also pots of parsley. So instead of throwing the pot away I reuse them for potting on plants and start off seeds including basil, yet to try parsley though.

5) I had intended to grow some Coleus plants, some for outside in the summer and some for indoors. It’s been years since I grew these. I always found Coleus to be a wonderful showy, bright and dark leafy plants. These Flame Dancers look to be a good start with Coleus. Along with the basil, I’ve sown some Coleus seeds, they need about the same temperature to germinate. Looking forward to seeing these grow. More updates to follow.

6) In amongst other shrubs is this Viburnum bodnantense I believe is variety Dawn. It has an intense scent and is certainly one of the strongest scented plants I know for this time of year. As I’ve already said it’s among other shrubs and brambles. Some work to do there but this shrub is certainly making its way out of the jungle.

There goes another Six. Not that exciting but there’s definitely life out there in the garden. With any luck there will be another Six on Saturday next week. Don’t forget to swing by The Propagator the one who started the Six on Saturday theme. All the best to the Six on Saturday people out there.