Begin tidying old leaves left on herbaceous plants by cutting with shears, and rake out rubbish and leaves that have collected under shrubs. This helps prevent pests and disease harbouring in piles of rotting vegetation. Do bear in mind that weeds will still grow this time of year, especially if this month stays frost free and damp.

It’s an ideal time to plant any new bare-rooted specimens, such as deciduous trees and shrubs along with roses. These will benefit from the addition of slow-release fertiliser to the surrounding soil, which in turn should be applied to all your beds.

it is also time prune late-flowering clematis. These flower on the current year’s growth, so cutting the stems hard now will prevent plants becoming tangled and untidy. Cut back to the hard woody stems, removing any green growth from last year.

Since we have many frosty days this month, it’s a great time to find a comfy sea, a steaming cup of coffee and cake – and look through the seed, plant and landscaping catalogues to let your imagination run wild and decide how you can improve your garden this coming year.

Roll on Spring!

That’s according to Becky Ball Managing Director of eazitools Equestrian, a manufacturer of innovative stable and field tools, which have been specially designed to minimise wastage and make caring for horses as easy as possible.

“The last two summers have been very dry, resulting in poor straw yields plus more farmers have now taken to ploughing straw back into their land to reduce the need for fertilisers, the price of which has also rocketed,” says Becky, adding: “On top of this the 2007 construction industry crash has resulted in a shortage of shavings and therefore steep price rises, which only looks likely to worsen until activity in the industry returns to the levels seen prior to the recession.”

A spokesperson for the British Hay & Straw Merchants Association said: “Straw prices are currently up to 20% higher than they were last year. One reason for this is that more straw is now being exported to Europe to cope with extra demand there. Last year’s cold winter also meant animals were kept inside for longer than normal and therefore used up more supplies.”

According to The British Horse Society a 12ft x 12ft stable requires approximately five bales of straw or eight bales of shavings to initially bed down, then three bales of straw a week or eight bales of shavings each week to top up.*

“Adequate, suitable bedding material is necessary in order to provide warmth for your horse, enable him to lie down in comfort, prevent injury and also to help reduce the risk of him becoming cast,” says Becky, adding: “We’re not suggesting that horse-owners reduce the amount of bedding they’re using as this could be detrimental to the health of their animals, but there are changes they can make and habits they put in place in order to keep their costs down this winter.

For example simply changing their mucking out technique, reviewing their tools or bulk buying bedding with other horse-owners on the same yard could make a big difference to their bills.”

Eazitool’s Tips for Keeping Down the Cost of Bedding:

1. Consider buying your straw by weight rather than per bale. It can often work out cheaper this way.
2. Clubbing together with other owners in your yard could help you take advantage of discount rates on bulk or wholesale orders.
3. Consider investing in rubber matting. The initial cost is high but the amount of bedding used from then on is reduced. Rubber matting can also help prevent stable injuries.
4. Review the tools you are currently using for mucking-out. Many tools now on the market have been specifically designed to sift debris and minimise wastage.
5. It sounds obvious, but try to use bedding as sparingly as possible. In terms of the amount of layering you need, consider the hardness of the floor surface and the time of year; as a general rule if the stable seems cold it’s best to add more bedding; if warmer you may be able to get away with less than you are currently using. Remember however that horses should avoid standing on bare concrete floors for long periods of time and, as such, the whole stable floor should always be covered.
6. Review your current mucking out habits. Rather than doing a full muck out of your stable daily consider ‘deep littering’ instead where any droppings and obvious wet bedding are removed and shavings or straw sprinkled on top of bedding every few days. Not only does this save time and money but it also provides a warm, compact bed for your horse. Remember however that mucking-out is an essential job and it can have serious ramifications for your horse’s health if they are left on a wet, dirty bed.
7. Check your storage facilities. Keep bedding as dry as possible and ideally indoors to reduce any waste.
8. Site water buckets or troughs at the front of the stable to prevent leaks.
9. Make sure you are providing good quality hay in plentiful supply for your horse in order to prevent him eating straw.
10. Consider keeping your horse outdoors for longer periods. This could save on both feed and bedding and many horses enjoy being turned out and will develop a thicker coat accordingly. However, there will always be times when your horse will need a stable, i.e. in severe weather or if he is ill.

Tidying also helps you discover hiding places for slugs and snails during the winter – a surefire way of reducing their numbers come the summer.

If soil is frosty or wet, try to avoid walking over beds as this can easily destroy the soil structure.

Continue planting dormant trees and shrubs in January and check that any newly planted shrubs have not been lifted up by the winter frosts. If so, use your heel to firm them back into the soil again.

In the event of heavy snowfall, carefully brush snow off conifers and evergreen plants to prevent the weight breaking any branches.

Happy new year to all gardeners from the team at eazitools!

Keep you hands clean with a pair of gloves

1. Keep a pair of overalls or waterproof trousers at your yard or stable so you can pull on over your clothes
2. Leave your horse’s outdoor rug on overnight (unless it’s soaked). This will help it keep dry ready for the next day
3. Fill haynets for the week at the weekend and invest in a hay bag to move them each day, so that you don’t go to work covered in hay
4. Keep a bucket of water by your stable for easy bucket refilling
5. Invest in a pair of latex gloves to keep fingernails clean
6. Use a dry shampoo to freshen up your hair

We buy eight million Christmas trees every year in this country – enough to fill a forest the size of 800 football pitches. But these days there is a wide range of varieties available to satisfy demand. The non-drop tree is worth the extra money but you can’t beat the smell of the traditional Norway Spruce.

You can make your tree what ever the variety last longer by looking after it’s two key needs: cool temperatures and plenty of water. Bringing it into the house early means it’s more likely to shed needles than if you stay with tradition and only bring it in on the 24th. And while it’s easy to forget to water the tree with all the excitement, if you don’t your pressies will be adorned with more than just wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

Top Tips to Stop the Drop:

1. Buy from a ‘choose-and cut’ plantation. Walk the rows of live trees, choose your tree and it’s felled for you. The British Christmas Tree Growers Association website lists sites near you – christmastree.org.uk

2. Try a pot-grown tree. Ideal if you only bring your tree in for the 12 days of Christmas, and you have somewhere cool to keep it. In January move it to a sheltered area outdoors and water well.

3. Inspect your tree before buying. Gently inspect the needles at the tip of the branches. If they fall off when you brush past them choose another tree.

4. Treat your tree like a cut flower. Saw off the bottom 2cm from the trunk and scar the bark on the lower part of the stem. This removes the sticky sap, which blocks up the stem, letting the tree absorb more water.

5. Thin out crowded branches. Before bringing the tree inside, cut off congested branches. This gives it a more graceful shape and slows the rate of water loss from leaves.

6. Plunge the base in water. Stand your tree in a bucket filled with pebbles and water, or select a stand that holds water. Top up every few days throughout the season.

7. Shake the tree outside. This will knock off loose or dead needles, before the tree comes into the house, which is especially important with the Norway Spruce.

8. Keep it cool. The best spot to put your tree is in a cool room, away from drafts and heat sources. Also turn off your fairy lights at night, as the heat they produce dries out the needles.

Remember to feed & water your garden birds this winter

Other garden jobs to do this month include:

- Protect pots from frost by wrapping them in bubble wrap & moving them to more sheltered areas
- Improve bare border soil by mixing in compost to prevent moss growing and improve drainage
- If snow falls, knock it off conifers and evergreen shrubs to prevent bending and breaking branches
- Store hosepipes inside over winter to prevent them freezing and getting damaged
- Provide water and food for birds this winter and they’ll repay you by controlling plant pests

November is a great month to take stock of your garden and plan for the following year. Take a good look round and decide what you would like to change and plan the plants you would like to include in next year’s garden.

Any trees or shrubs that you would like to move can be safely transported now and perennials can also still be planted. Roses respond well to planting this time of year, whilst the soil is still warm enough to encourage a little root growth.

Be sure to look out for Hedgehogs before lighting your bonfire

Any plants appreciate being well watered before planting. Stand bare root roses and trees in a bucket of water for an hour, and if the dry weather continues, watering may be required after planting.

If you are planning a bonfire night party in your garden, have a thorough tidy up beforehand and remove any fallen branches or debris to reduce the risk of guests tripping over in the dark. Check for hedgehogs before lighting your bonfire also.

Enjoy the fireworks!

That’s according to Becky Ball, Managing Director of eazitools Ltd which produces the Rag-Fork, a tool specifically designed to effectively remove ragwort and other common field weeds by their roots, preventing re-growth.

Fully grown ragwort plant

Says Becky: “Ragwort is a highly toxic common weed that grows throughout the British Isles and thrives on poorly managed pastures and wasteland. It is extremely difficult to eradicate and each plant can produce up to 200,000 seeds that can lay dormant in the soil for up to 16 years. All parts of the plant are poisonous. Stems contain from 25-50 percent of the alkaloid concentration found in leaves, flowers contain at least twice as much as leaves.”

Ragwort poses a lethal threat to all grazing animals, particularly horses, ponies and donkeys and is one of the most common causes of plant poisoning in the UK. The British Horse Society estimates that up to 6,500 horses die from ragwort poisoning in the UK each year.

“Horses rarely eat ragwort unless there is nothing else to eat, however it is most dangerous when mixed in hay, haylage or silage as it becomes extremely palatable when dried and is also much harder for horse owners to spot. Many more cases of ragwort poisoning are therefore reported in spring or early summer due to ingestion over the winter in hay”, adds Becky.

Beware ragwort in your hay this winter

The toxins in ragwort are cumulative and eating a small amount of ragwort over a long period of time can be just as damaging as eating one large amount. The effects of ragwort infestation are not pleasant. Symptoms include weight loss, poor coat, staggering gait, impaired vision followed by circling, colliding with obstacles, severe abdominal pain, inability to swallow and ultimately complete paralysis and death.

Clinical symptoms including blindness, loss of coordination and sensitivity to light do not appear until the liver is 76% damaged. Owners may only become aware of a problem once these clinical symptoms appear, by which time it is too late. The disease is often not discovered until post-mortem and many animals die undiagnosed.

The potential dangers of ragwort to human health are also starting to be recognised, and due to this, gloves, and facemasks when the plants are flowering, should always be worn when removing plants in order to protect skin from any contact with the plant.

Becky’s Tips for Preventing Ragwort Poisoning Through Hay Consumption:

• Reduce your reliance on bought in hay if possible and check your own fields regularly for presence of ragwort. See www.defra.gov.uk for Code of Practice on How to Prevent the Spread of Ragwort.
• Alternatively, only buy hay from a reliable source and ask the supplier for assurance that it contains no ragwort.
• If not convinced, find out which fields the hay is obtained from and check for ragwort before the hay is cut or ask to inspect a bale before you buy.
• If you are worried there may be ragwort in your hay ask your vet to test a blood sample of your animal for liver damage. If detected very early there is hope that your animal may return to normal.
• Ideally check bales before offering it to livestock. Learn to distinguish between grasses and harmful weeds and dispose of any stray weeds you do not recognise.
• If you detect ragwort in your hay and know the field where it came from you can report this to Natural England by calling 0300 060 1112.

National magazine, Gardeners’ World, which is Britain’s best selling gardening magazine listed the eazi-spade in a feature entitled “Five to try”, aimed at helping readers make light work of digging.

Of the five tools listed, the tool achieved the ‘Our Choice’ accolade, due to its longer shaft reducing the need to bend and innovative stirrup design requiring less force from the user.

Raking autumn leaves seems never ending

Spring and autumn are two of the most industrious times of the year in the garden and it is worth thinking about one when you are working during the other. Bulb planting is a good example, and now is the time to think about how to light up the garden when it wakes after hibernation. Bulbs are incredible value, for they have instant impact, but it is always better to buy few varieties and larger numbers of each. Think 10s and multiples of 10 for a generous effect in pots. Think 100s (buy wholesale, anyone can if the numbers are large enough) if you are planting in grass, and look into the right varieties. The smaller-flowered Narcissus cyclamineus hybrids such as “Jack Snipe” have fine foliage and so are easily incorporated, and there are early, mid-season and late varieties to keep the display working from late winter until May.

The earlier you plant bulbs the better, for the soil is still warm, and getting the roots established before the weather closes in will help them fight wet and rot. That said, tulips are happy to go in as late as the end of November, so leave them until last. The general rule is that bulbs should be planted at two and a half times their own depth, and if you are planting in drifts, work on the principle that if you threw them in the air, you would plant where they landed.

October is the perfect time to plant Spring Bulbs

1. Clear up fallen autumn leaves regularly
2. Cut back perennials that have died down
3. Divide herbaceous perennials and rhubarb crowns
4. Move tender plants, including aquatic ones, into the greenhouse
5. Plant out spring bulbs
6. Harvest apples and pears
7. Prune climbing roses
8. Order seeds for next year
9. Last chance to mow lawns and trim hedges
10. Renovate old lawns or create new grass areas by laying turf