Well I can’t believe it is February already and we have been blessed with another sunny weekend which meant lots of gardening jobs got done. Mostly weeding and tidying but I’m feeling quite smug now! The garden is starting to transform – check out my other blog at http://www.ayearinmygarden2013.com for a weekly photographic record.
I’ve been reading up on what gardeners should be doing in February and here are the main jobs:
- Prepare soil for summer bedding by forking in compost.
- Suppress weeds with mulch – well rotted manure or bark chips.
- dead head winter bedding.
- Start sowing summer bedding and greenhouse vegetable seeds if you have somewhere warm to do this.
- Wash the greenhouse glass and ventilate on sunny days.
- Start collecting toilet roll tubes and egg boxes for starting off sweet peas and beans and chitting potatoes.
- Tidy up strawberry plants.
- Chit early new potatoes.
- Add potash around the base of fruit canes, bushes and trees – Mr Mac sprinkles the ash from the wood burner.
- Warm soil by placing a cloche, polythene or carpet over it.
- Tidy up herbs.
- Check seeds from previous years to make sure they are still worth sowing. Try the germination test – put 20 seeds on moist kitchen paper and put somewhere warm for seven days. If the germination rate is less than 50% then chuck them out and buy new ones!
- Clean out water butts.
- Turn compost heap.
- Sow peas inside for an early crop. I did this last year and it was a great success.
I still have not done January’s job of sorting out my seeds, seeing what I need to order and make a plan for the garden for this year but it is too early for me anyway. I don’t want to make the same mistake I made last year by sowing tomato and flower seeds in mid-February and then losing them all to frost in April. That set me back 7 weeks but everything caught up in the end.
I have done lots of weeding, mulching and dead-heading so don’t feel too bad and the garlic was planted last weekend.
Having researched what type of garlic to buy I decided hardneck types would be better for the Scottish climate. They are more hardy than their softneck cousins and thrive in the UK, especially in northern areas. The only down side is they do not store as well – not an issue in our house as we eat it all the time.
However, when I went to the garden centre the packaging gave no indication of whether the variety was hardneck or softneck so we opted for Solent Wight which is produced in the UK and Arno, a French variety.
We split up the bulbs and planted each clove of the Solent Wight in individual pots so it can be planted outside later in the spring. As Arno is used to the French climate we opted to grow that in one of the beds inside the greenhouse.
It is the first time we have tried growing garlic so fingers crossed!
gardeningforlawyers 