February is the month in your garden you really start to feel like it’s going to be a great year for gardening again. It’s still cold out there but you’ve got the inspiration and the sun light coming back and there’s never been a better time to start prepare summer gardening. There are plenty of jobs to be getting on with in the garden in February and I’m going to go through a good list of them, as we’re heading into Spring.
- Get started on the weeding. There’s nothing like preparing your borders and your planting beds and the best way to do that is a quick dig and remove all of the unnecessary weeds. This is great time as they’ll not come back before the planting of your seedlings and therefore there won’t be any competition for food or sunlight.
- This is a great time to get into the shed and check that you’ve got all of your tools in order. Make sure that any of your lawn mowers or leaf blowers have been well serviced with grease and oil.
- This is the perfect time to get your seeds in order. Make sure that you have all of the sowing order ready to go and then you’ve got all of your seed planting trays ready to roll as well. Being organised now means that when the summer warmer months are here you’ll enjoy the garden all the more.
- This is a great time to mix a bit of compost into the ground at the same time as having everything ready for the seedlings that will be coming along soon.
- You probably still want to wait until March to use the lawn mower, but nothing stopping you collect up all the leaves with a handy leaf blower vacuum.
February: A great time to prune and tidy up.
This is one of the best times to get your Wisteria and Fuchsias. Giving them a quick prune now will result in an excellent growth this summer. It’s an excellent time to take advantage and get all of the pruning on any of your traps really. Get everything nice and clean and organised and it means that it will be one less job as you approach spring.
In the vegetable garden.
One of the vegetables that I like to plant every single year is the potato. So it’s fitting to start with chitting potatoes in February. Just make sure that you have some kind of container that will hold them upright and place them where there’s plenty of sunshine.
There’s nothing quite as exciting is actually growing your own potatoes and providing yourself with plenty of sustenance from the garden. Potatoes that just one of those things that really make a big difference in terms of the amount of food you actually need to purchase outside. For that reason I always have them at the top of my list for February.
Building raised vegetable beds in February to promote early warmth.
One of the best tricks I know is to start building raised beds in February. This is really beneficial for your vegetables because we can get a really early start on them and that gets you ahead of the curve.
Because the surface area of a raised bed is larger it means that the sun can penetrate and warm the ground more easily, that’s ideal for vegetable seedlings and it will result in you having a bigger and healthier crop. Raised beds are also a great way of watering and penetrating the soil.
What to do in February with the fruit garden
One of the most important things I do in February is make sure that I’m pruning the black car gooseberries, and raspberries. this is exactly the right time of year to get this done. The idea is you’re doing this before any of the growth occurs.
I also create some sort of propagator for my strawberries out of perspex or glass (if it’s safety toughened), many people advocate the use of some cloth material over the top of your plants but I prefer my method here.
I hope that in this article of ‘what to do in February with the garden’ you’ve picked up some really handy tips and if there’s anything that I’ve missed them please feel free to drop me a message and let me know so that I can add it to this great list and resource.
