Gardening Advice & Tips for Irish Gardeners

The weather may not agree that it is February but my calendar does so that is reason enough to turn my attention to the gardening year ahead. February is a time to begin planning out what you want from your garden over the coming months. If you are growing vegetables, now is the time to choose the varieties you want to grow and ordering your seed potatoes for chitting at the end of the month.

February is a great time to get out to the vegetable patch and turn that old worn looking soil over to create a fresh patch of weed free light and airy soil. It is good practise to prepare your vegetable beds well before you begin to sow them. As far back as last November is even a good time to prepare your beds. This is to allow the soil settle back down, to allow all the soil organisms; bacteria’s and worms, that are so vital in healthy soils, return to their patch and start doing their thing. Preparing the soil early also gives the farm yard manure time to break down and release its nutrients back into the soil.

February is the month to order your vegetable seeds and seed potatoes. Before doing this, take the time to work out how much space you have and what you want to eat over the year. As little as 3 rows of carrots can be enough to feed a small family for 6 months while you would probably need 8 to 10 rows of potatoes to last the same length of time. When planning out your plot remember to rotate your crops and be sure to never grow the same crop in the same place two years in a row.

Other gardening tasks in February include:

1. Tidying up last year’s leaves. There is always a few still lying around and getting out now with the leaf rake can really help neaten up the place. You can put the leaves on the compost heap or use them to mulch up around tender plant.
2. Giving your lawn a light cut or top if the weather is dry enough. This could have been done in late January too but the weather is rarely suitable then. If you are going to cut your lawn be sure to set your mower to the highest setting as you only want to top and level your lawn. As the season move on you can start to lower the mower blades.
3. Starting your tomato seeds indoors: A common mistake by eager gardeners is to start sowing too soon. But for tomatoes that is a risk that has to be taken if your to get fully ripe fruits by the September. Tomato seeds can be sown indoors, under cover in late February, early March. Prick out the seedlings once large enough to handle in 9cm plant pots. Allow them to grow to about 10cm before transplanting on to larger pots or into a Tomato Grow Pot.
4. Get the last of the bare-root hedging. The dormant season runs from late October through to early March. This is the only time to sow bare root plants and the best time to sow all other container grown plants. If planting beech hedging make a trench 1 ft deep and 2 ft wide, add farm yard manure to the base and position plants about 1ft apart in a staggered pattern.
5. Prune back your shrub roses. Early spring is the time to prune back roses and all other shrubs so long as they are not spring flowering shrubs (which should be cut back after flowering in early summer).
6. On better days you can lift and divide clump from perennials such as asters, anemones, irises and more.