You can start your  gardening on New Years Day or as soon as your hangover is cured. Do not have too many resolutions or you won’t keep any of them. I find it is a good idea to know roughly what you want to achieve in the year without being too specific as to how. For my part I have decided to have more soft fruit and ‘Shock and Awe’ type garden features.

Steps for January

Fruit

• Prune apple trees and thin out the fruiting spurs. In my case buy cordons or ballerina trees.
• Cut out any dead or diseased wood and spray trees with winter tar oil wash to deter insects. Leave the plums till later.
• Remove any big buds on black currant bushes.
• Cover a rhubarb crown with a forcer to get early, thin, pink stems.
• Plant any new trees or shrubs – I want a dessert gooseberry
• Tie up raspberry canes and check for loose ties on trees and wall trained fruit.

Vegetables

• Order any seeds from a reputable supplier and sprout potatoes in a box with the rounded rose end upper most
• Sow some broad beans when it is mild
• Lime the vegetable patch that grew brassicas last year. Do not lime your potato patch.
• Plan where crop rotation is going to be.

Flowers and Shrubs

• Tidy the borders and plant lilies and Antirrhinums
• Ventilate your cold frame
• Check frost protection for new young shrubs
• Spray roses and the surrounding ground against black spot and mulch Rhododendrons

Lawns

• Service the lawn mower ready for spring
• Keep clear of dead leaves Rake mossy areas

Greenhouse and Indoor Plants

• Clean staging and fumigate the greenhouse
• Take cuttings of late flowering chrysanthemums
• Keep houseplants on the dry side in the best light
• Pick sprays of Daphne & forsythia to flower indoors

General

• Don’t rush into doing anything too early but be prepared for your busy period
• Do any construction work except concreting during a frost
• Sow leeks and onions in boxes and even some lettuce and peppers in the warmth.
• Look closely around your garden there will be treasures to uncover. Hellebore niger, Winter Jasmin and Witch Hazel (above) are all flowering

February Tips

Garden Tasks for February

• Finish Planting trees and shrubs. The earlier trees and shrubs can be planted the better
• Prepare Soil. If the soil is not frozen it is a good time to prepare the soil through digging where necessary.
• Finish Pruning of Roses or other shrubs
• Towards the end of February, you can start dahlia tubers and similar tubers such gloxina and Begonias indoors.

Vegetable Garden in February

• Sow early crops under glass. Early vegetables can included mustard, cress, parsnips, broad beans and lettuce.
• Towards end of the month you can start thinning out seedlings
• Prune Autumn fruiting Raspberries. Autumn producing raspberries want to be cut back to 6 inches as they fruit on new growth.

A bed of crocus

Things to Enjoy in the February Garden

• Early bulbs – snowdrops, crocus, early daffodills.
• Early primulas –
• Early pansies
• Camellia Japonica
• Daphne

Related

• February Gardeners Tips
• January Garden Tips
• Top 10 Spring Flowering Shrubs
• Early Spring Flowers