Jobs for February
February can be a very mixed month weather-wise, from sunshine warm enough to take your coat off, to snow or heavy freezing rain. On good days, take time to get out in to the garden to work and look around.
If the ground isn’t too frozen or waterlogged, you can dig the soil over, or turn any compost that you have. Tidy up any debris on beds and the lawn, if it isn’t too wet or frozen to walk on. Get organized and buy all the seeds and compost that you are going to need for the coming months.
Flower Garden
Sowing and Growing
You can start sowing hardy annual seeds inside now such as Ammi majus, Anethum graveolens, Calendula offinicalis ‘Indian Prince’, Cerinthe major and all the Scabious. However, don’t be tempted to sow too many seeds this early in the sowing as they may become leggy & drawn out due to low light levels at this time of year.
Start sowing slow-growers under cover like antirrhinums & cobaea.
Order dahlias, gladioli & other summer flowering bulbs.
Add organic fertiliser to your borders. Blood, fish and bone, seaweed or pelleted chicken manure is ideal.
Pot on cuttings of tender perennials taken in the autumn.
Bulbs and Tubers
You could try planting some nerines for inside in terracotta pots with John Innes no.3 loam-based compost and some grit.
Plant Snowdrops in the green and divide any larger congested clumps if you have any already in the garden.
Plant deliciously-scented lily bulbs in pots and in your borders.
Start dahlia tubers in to growth.
Plant Lily of the Valley (Convallaria).
Bring pots of spring bulbs into the greenhouse to encourage flowering.
Keep forced hyacinths that have flowered early inside and plant them outside in a sunny spot,
Pruning and Tidying
Cut back summer flowering clematis, remove all overcrowded and straggly stems, cutting them as low down on the plant as you can and tie in any loose stems. Early spring and winter clematis flowering varieties don’t need any attention now.
Finish pruning fruit trees and bushes and add a sprinkling of sulphate or potash around the base of their trunks.
Cut autumn-fruiting raspberry canes to the ground.
Move shrubs growing in the wrong place, and cut back any overgrown shrubs and hedges.
Prune late-flowering shrubs, like buddleias and hardy fuchsias. Cut buddleias down to keep them compact- the more severe (cut down about a metre off the ground), the better.
Prune winter-flowering shrubs that have finished flowering. Cut back dogwood, willow and contius stems.
Later in February, prune back shoots on mophead + lacecap hydrangeas to a pair of buds.
Cut back large leaves on hellebores so that the flowers are not hidden beneath.
Grow replacements dogwood from hardwood cuttings taken any time from now until the end of April.