February in the Garden

Sow indoors this month: pinks, ornamental peppers, heliotrope, gerbera daisy, zonal geranium, lettuce, celery, tomatoes for pots, and hardy tomatoes for transplanting early outdoors.

Some good early, hardy tomatoes that can be transplanted outdoors at the end of April provided frost no longer threatens: Oregon Spring, Kootenai, Prairie Fire, Stupice, Early Cascade. These tomatoes are available from Territorial Seeds.

Choose a fine-weather day to empty the greenhouse and wash it thoroughly with a household disinfectant cleaner. Frames can be given a similar cleansing.

Plump the soil in frames with compost or composted manure and sow hardy vegetables such as radish, spinach, early carrots, lettuce, and green onions. Jerusalem artichokes and broad beans can be planted in the open garden towards the end of the month if the soil is not too wet.

Follow the pruning of fruit trees and roses with a final dormant lime sulphur spray, this time mixed with dormant oil to smother overwintering insect pests.

Prune winter jasmine when flowering finishes. Cut back flowering shoots to within about five centimeters (two inches) of the base. Remove dead growth and some of the oldest wood.

Lift trailing canes of blackberry and tayberry up from their winter harbours on the ground and secure them to their wire supports.

Lift, divide and transplant snowdrops and winter aconites (Eranthis) while the foliage is still green.

Prune common (big-leaf) hydrangeas late in the month, when the worst of winter has passed. Remove the old flower heads, cutting the stems down to a point about six millimetres (a quarter inch) above the first fat pair of buds below the old flowers.

If the colouring of your hydrangea blooms was muddied last year, clarify the pink and red varieties by scattering wood ash or lime underneath the plants. Use peat moss under the blue ones to acidify the soil. Cover these soil amendments with a generous layer of compost.