It's never too early to order seeds

As we head into January, some things to keep in mind with regard to the garden.

• It is a good idea to check on the seeds you have saved and stored from last year's garden. Discard any that are damp, diseased or moldy and then determine what you need to order for the coming year. Order plants and seeds now to help ensure you get the plant varieties you want. Consider varieties that are pest- and disease-resistant to minimize future problems in the garden.

• It is easy to forget about the garden in the winter, but animals can continue to cause damage.

It is important to continue to monitor your garden for damage from animals and install barriers as needed. As snow piles up, rabbits can reach higher into shrubs to feed.

Repellents can be applied when temperatures are above 40 degrees for a few hours. You may need to reapply once every month, more often if temperatures are warm and there is lots of rain.

• Paperwhite narcissus will require a cage or a ring of raffia tied around them to keep them from flopping as they grow. If purchased as bulbs, you can grow them in a shallow dish or a vase filled with pebbles rather than soil. Put about 2 inches of pebbles in the bottom of a small vase or about four inches in a large vase. Arrange the bulbs close together and cover them with pebbles, with just their tips exposed. The weight of the pebbles helps to keep them from falling to the side as they grow. Finally, add water until the water level reaches just below the base of the bulbs, but no higher (if the bases of the bulbs sit in water, they will rot). Discard the bulbs after flowering, but rinse and keep the pebbles for future forced bulbs.

• Winter is a good time for garden planning. Consult your notes on seed and plant purchases, past garden successes and failures and garden maps as you begin to plan garden improvements for the coming year. Do not let the pretty catalog pictures push you into buying things that may not work in your particular garden. Choosing the right plant for your garden conditions and design goals is very important.

• The warm weather in November and December has been unusual and has had an impact on gardens. At this point in time, there is not much gardeners need to do in response to the weather. The Garden staff currently is not doing any supplemental watering to new plantings since there has been adequate rain. The nice weather allows you to get a jump on next spring, but it is best to avoid working with and on wet soil. You can expect any new growth of bulbs and perennials that has occurred will get frozen at some point this winter. This should not have any significant impact on these plants. Whether or not the spring display of early flowering trees and shrubs like redbuds, cornelian cherries, forsythia and lilacs will be affected depends on how long the warm weather lasts. The longer the weather stays unusually warm, the more advanced the tree and shrub development will be and the greater chances of damage to the flowers, with fewer spring flowers on some of your plants.

• Until the ground freezes, you can place brick paths and patios, install sod and plant deciduous trees and shrubs. If you are pruning early spring flowering shrubs such as forsythia, you should be able to force the branches inside by cutting stems and putting in a vase with water.

• Tim Johnson is director of horticulture at Chicago Botanic Garden, chicagobotanic.org.