Your first New Year’s resolution is to recycle the Christmas tree rather than leaving it in the garden as a reproachful skeleton until August! Garden centres and local recycling centres will quite often take them, and I have checked that the Cheltenham Council collects trees 4ft or under left out on the first refuse day after Christmas – I should imagine the other local councils do this too.

Try forcing some rhubarb – cover the dormant buds with either straw or dry leaves inside a terracotta forcing pot or a large bucket to keep the light out. Tender pink stems will be produced in a few weeks’ time. Don’t do this to the same plant every year, as it will need to recover and build its reserves up.

Clear the vegetable garden of old crops and cover the ground with a layer of black plastic to help warm the ground for sowing early crops. This will also cut down on the weeding. Weeds still grow even in the chilly weather – keep on top of them and it will save time later on in the year. Dandelions, docks and other perennial weeds with long taproots can be removed at this time of the year more easily than at others – make sure you have the whole root out or it will just re-grow.

Garlic grows best when it has endured some winter chill and rain, so plant out individual cloves in a sunny spot, pointed end up, 15cm apart with 2.5cm of soil covering them. If the soil is heavy or really wet, you can start the cloves off in small pots of soil-based compost and leave outside in a sheltered spot ready to plant out in spring.

January is the right time to give wisteria its winter pruning. Cut back the whippy stems that have grown last year to two or three buds – this will create flowering ‘spurs’ to bloom in the summer. Do take care if you need to use a ladder – make sure the bottom is secure on a flat surface and don’t lean over to make it unstable.

If you have a vast wisteria that has gone beserk after being ignored for many years, it may pay to get in a specialist gardener who can get it back into some semblance of order and enable you to carry on with it yourself in the future.