Woodlands Nurseries
February Tips

February

Flowers

• Plant roses, so they flower this summer
• Collect up and compost fallen leaves, in case they harbour diseases
• Sprinkle your lawn with top dressing of loam-based compost for healthy growth
• Dig over vacant beds and add plenty of organic matter
• Move dormant shrubs and conifers
• Buy gladioli, cannas, begonias, dahlias and summer flowering bulbs
• Plant new hedges; prune hardy evergreen hedges and renovate overgrown deciduous hedges
• Divide bulbs such as snowdrops
• Prune winter-flowering shrubs that have finished flowering
• Protect hellebores and alpines from heavy rain with cloches or similar
• Prune climbers

In the greenhouse

• Check greenhouse heaters are working efficiently and you aren’t wasting heat.
• Improve insulation in your greenhouse by lining it with bubble wrap and sealing the windows
• Pick off faded leaves and flowers before they start to rot to reduce the chance of harbouring disease
• Plant dahlia tubers, begonias, gloxinias and eucomis in pots and keep them in a warm position
• Water over wintering pots of fuchsias and pelargoniums if their compost is dry
• Plant chrysanthemum cuttings for colour in the summer

Fruit and vegetables

• Finish digging over empty beds to get the soil ready for sowing and planting
• Sow onions and leeks in pots in a windowsill propagator or heated greenhouse
• Plant new fruit trees, bushes and cane fruits. You can carry on planting bare-root fruit trees until mid to late March
• Net fruit and vegetable crops to keep the birds off
• Divide large clumps of rhubarb and replant new sections
• Cover seakale and rhubarb with forcing pots to exclude light
• Prune side shoots on trained forms of gooseberry back to two or three buds
• Crops to sow outside under cloches now include hardy peas, broad beans, radishes, parsnips and spinach
• Chit potato tubers

Around the garden

• Clear up debris and leaves that could be harbouring slugs and snails
• Loosen tree ties on established trees so they can’t constrict growing stems
• Spread a generous mulch of compost, manure, or bark over borders, especially around the base of trees and shrubs
• Cut back deciduous grasses left uncut over the winter
• Check summer bulbs in storage for signs of rot
• Buy seeds, bulbs, potatoes and onion sets from your local garden centre