Organic Gardening Magazine

February fruit

• If your winter pruning of apples and pears is not complete, do it on the first available day; by mid-month the trees will be starting into growth in milder areas.
• This is the last month for planting bare-root fruit trees and bushes if you live in the south. Waiting until March is both safer and kinder in the north.
• Clear grass and weeds from around the base of fruit trees, and mulch them with manure or compost.
• Protect early blossom from frost with fleece or sacking.
• Plant new raspberries, blackberries and hybrid berries, cutting the canes back to 22cm (9in). In spring, once new canes have emerged, cut the old canes down to ground level.
• Propagate currants and gooseberries by taking hardwood cuttings.

• MUCH more in the magazine

Ornamentals

Pot on autumn-sown sweet peas, and pinch out the tips to produce strong bushy plants. Picture: Mike Clark

• Sow some hardy annuals in trays under cover to give you the earliest possible flowers. Tender annuals are better left until next month, however, unless you have a lot of heated growing-on space.
• Sow seeds of hardy perennials – many need an early start if they are to flower this year.
• Divide and replant congested perennials and herbs, discarding the woody growth in the centre. Spring-flowering species are better left until autumn.
• Once snowdrops and winter aconites finish flowering, lift and divide them ‘in the green’. If you want to plant more, buy them now.
• Propagate shrubs by taking hardwood cuttings.
• Start mulching, beginning with large shrubs and trees. Top-dressing herbaceous borders should be left until the soil is warmer.
• Continue dead-heading winter pansies – with encouragement, they will go on flowering well into spring.
• Trim winter-flowering heathers that have finished flowering back to the base of the flower stalks.
• Prune winter-flowering shrubs once they finish flowering (see pages 54-55).


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February Veg

Get set to sow!
• Cover beds for early crops with black plastic, cloches or cold frames a couple of weeks ahead of your intended sowing date.
• If your first early potatoes are not already chitting, it’s time to set them upright in trays in good light. In the south, you can plant your first earlies as soon after Valentine’s Day as soil conditions permit, though you will need to protect early growth from hard frosts. Wherever you live, you will want them ready for planting by mid-March. Second earlies can be set to chit two or three weeks after the first earlies.
• If you haven’t got that seed order sent off yet, do it now – the sowing season will be underway in earnest before you know it, so make sure you have all the seeds, sets, tubers, pots and compost that you need.

Sowing & planting
• Garlic and shallots can be planted now as long as the soil is reasonably dry; if not, wait until March, or start the garlic in pots.
• Sow onions from seed in a tray or under a cold frame, or plant sets (but not heat-treated ones) in the open ground at the end of the month. Leeks can be sown in trays or modules, or under a frame.
• Hardy varieties of broad bean can be sown direct in most gardens, or you can start the seeds in pots. You can also sow early, hardy varieties of pea under a cloche. Alternatively, sow rows of peas in lengths of guttering under cover. Once the peas are well up and the roots have bonded the compost together, slide each row out into the garden soil.
• February is the traditional sowing month for parsnips, but the seed will just rot in wet ground, so wait until March if it is very wet – or start the seed in toilet roll tubes, which you can transplant tube and all, thus avoiding any root disturbance.
• Sow early, short-rooted carrots under a frame or in a pot under cover.
• In milder areas, you can sow lettuce, radishes, spring onions, beetroot and spinach under a cloche in February. Alternatively, sow them in modules for planting out late next month. Kohlrabi can also be sown direct now, but often does better started off in modules, as do celery and celeriac.

• Harvesting details and more in the magazine

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