Spring doesn’t officially arrive for over a month, and even then it’s anything but reliable. Nevertheless, now is the time to plan for the coming garden season. Have you been drawing designs for your garden? Planning a hedge to block the wind or an unsightly view? Windbreaks can make a huge difference in the quality of your outdoor experience, giving you shade, privacy, and, of course, shelter from the wind. They also protect a precious resource, our topsoil.
Here’s the short list of fun February gardening projects:
Order seeds: Don’t be afraid to start plants from seed. Most annuals are easy to germinate and quick to produce. Lettuce can be harvested in only 45 days after planting! When you grow your own plants from seed, you can get exactly what you want. Love romaine lettuce? Plant enough for the whole family with one packet of seed. A seed packet costs about the same as one or two plants! (We’re in the business of selling plants, but we also want people to be happy gardeners. The more you grow from seed yourself, the more you will love gardening!)
Bring cut branches inside to force flowers: Do you have forsythia in your yard? Honeysuckle? Crab apple? Pussy willow? If you cut branches now, you can have flowers blooming in two or three weeks! You can harvest them anytime the temperature is above freezing.
Clean and sharpen tools: If you didn’t put your shovels and pruners away nicely cleaned and sharpened, do that now before the pruning season starts. March and early April are prime months for pruning fruit trees. I’m not a whiz at sharpening, but even I can sharpen a shovel with a file. A sharp shovel makes digging so much easier!
Put your design on paper: If you are planning your vegetable garden, it’s good to keep track of where you grow tomatoes and peppers from year to year. To keep them disease free, they need to be on a three year rotation with other plants not in the nightshade family. Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are all in the same family and shouldn’t be grown in the same place in your garden every year. Even if you just quickly sketch your garden plans, with a big square for each variety, you will be happy next year when you’re trying to remember what was planted where.
Check houseplants: If you brought plants inside for the winter, they could be getting leggy and floppy about now. Cut back geraniums (pelargoniums) and use the cuttings to start more plants. (The picture below is of Pelargonium ‘Phyllis’ one of my new favorites.) The sun is coming back, and even though it still seems like there’s too much darkness, the plants can sense it. If you prune house plants now, they’ll reward you with new, full growth in a few weeks.
‘Phyllis’
