Welcome to the new year 2004 and the beginning of your garden year I take this opportunity to wish my readers a new year filled with good health, happiness, and good gardening.

1. Planning your garden: You should prepare a plan of what you would like to achieve in your garden this year. Choose plants with flower colours that to harmonize with your home, inside and out. Your experience during 1999 will assist you in knowing the successful annuals, biennials, perennials and vegetables.

2. Roles: Prune your hybrid teas and floribundas and seal the wounds with punning paint or sealant. Spray with dormant oil (Oil of Emulsion or Volk oil) before growth begins. Feed your roses with a complete plant food fertilizer and add organic mulch around the roots of your plants. Continue your spraying program to control blackspot and powdery mildew.

3. Flowers and Bulbs : This is the month to design your garden. Remove spent blooms and fertilize hardy annuals, biennials and perennials. Continue to weed and keep the beds and borders clean.

Bulbs. This is the month to plant bulbs. Check your local nursery for bulb selections.

4. Flowering Trees and Shrubs: Prime and trim these trees to shape. Spray with a dormant oil spray (Oil of Emulsion or Volk Oil). Place organic mulch around the roots of the plants and water liberally. As you prune to shape, you should take cuttings in order to increase your plant inventory.

5. Vegetables and Herbs : Prepare your seed beds by adding organic peat moss to the soil. If your vegetable garden is small, you may purchase plants from your local nursery and check that the leaves of the plants are not spotty or show signs of damage

6. Herbs : They are beautiful and fragrant plants for your garden. Easy to grow and provide a valuable garden companion for your vegetable plants. Check your local Nursery for seeds or plants.

7. Fruit Trees : Mango - Avocado Pears - Citrus. Feed these trees with a good granular fertilizer. Spray all trees that do not have fruits on them with Oil of Emulsion or Volk Oil and Blackleaf 40, Sevin, Diazinon or Orthene Systemic Insect Spray.

8. Lawns: Apply a good lawn weed and feed fertilizer and spray your lawn for insect control with Diazinon, Malathion 5001 Dursban Lawn Insect Spray.

9. Propagation : As you prune your flowering plants you can take cuttings. Place them in a mixture of equal parts of peat moss and coarse sand. Dip the bottom end in a rooting hormone powder or liquid and place them in a 6-inch pot and keep in a cool shady area.

10. Watch For: Slugs and snails. These pests will destroy your young plants. Control: Use a reputable bait or my own experimental product which has been very successful in my garden. Ortho Bug-Gets Plus broadcasting a little in your garden early in the evening and repeating the exercise two weeks later.

Bahamas Met. Office Average Rainfall for January: 1.55 inches

Posted: Saturday January 3, 2004