Now that January is three days and this afternoon away from ending, it’s a good time to turn our attention to all the things we didn’t do this month, and how much fun we had doing other things like working, commuting, and watching other people garden on the internet while we kept our sofa warm.
But this is no cause for alarm: a typical February is much like a typical January in the garden, only with even more spring bulbs blooming (which you can plant “In the Green“, by the way).
You will hear the same theme everywhere from gardeners: January-February is the time to “Reflect, Plan, Evaluate” and other similar words. The canvas is as bare as it will be all year, so it’s the ideal time to decide on big changes, and to transplant larger shrubs or small trees.
Huw Richards’ videos epitomise the kind of well-thought-out, charming, informative production that we are so glad someone else does all the hard work of making. He starts off with the most important element of gardening: the soil. January-February is a fine time to mulch with well rotted compost for your cleared vegetable beds, or perhaps bark-chip for ornamental beds.
There is an argument for mulching vegetable beds later in Spring colder, Northern & North facing locations, to give the soil time to warm up, but in most cases it’s good to get it done early so the worms have time work on it.
Another great point he mentions is weeding early and often, which saves so much time later in the growing season – a minute of weeding early in the year saves an hour of weeding later.
An extra tip: when the soil is dry, it grips a weed’s roots, so your nice sharp hoe can slice the top growth off nicely. When the soil is wet, many weeds slip right out of the soil, so that’s a better time for pulling them up by hand and with a trowel or hand fork.
And the winter / early Spring cropping plants he mentions are turnips, Swiss chard, parsley, leeks, rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes, and lettuce.
It’s no secret around that if we could be anybody else, we would be John Lord’s cameraman, who makes a valiant attempt at being professional and stifling their chortles as John holds court in Ratoath Garden Centre, where the end of winter is a hubbub of activity – this video was made right after they’d had the mini-digger in to dig up and shift some serious rootballs. Machinery like that is a bit awkward for most gardens, but the point that it’s often good to move plants around, and serious working gardens like Ratoath are always chopping and changing.
Notice that John likes to use his pickaxe, which is such a good tool for getting under plants and lifting them: it’s designed for that leverage, whereas many a garden spade (such as the lighter-than-air Wilkinson’s Sword Ultralight Spade!) will bend and break if too much force is applied to the handle while the head is stuck under a rootball.
Rain or shine, nothing beats working in the garden like watching John do it instead.
On the theme of this January-February time being great for tinkering with your garden design, John has a couple of characteristically hands-on presentations about thinking through your new borders, and replanting existing ones:
February is a special month for us with our new range of Sweet Pea Seeds (select varieties only), so let’s round off with some cosy potting shed ideas: