February in the garden
by Sarah Raven
prepare your veg patches
Sowing veg, salad and herbs
- Sow salad leaves and hardy herbs eg chervil into jiffy 7’s or guttering. Sow some early veg inside: lettuce, radish, beetroot, spring onions, peas and broad beans. You can also start your tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and onions inside if you have a heated bench or propagator. Chit maincrop potatoes and put a few early potatoes in big pots or empty compost bags for forcing early in a greenhouse or polytunnel. (see my full choice of which flower and veg seeds to sow now here >>)
Harvest
- Brassicas: Brussels sprouts, red and green cabbages, kale, forced sea kale and cauliflower.
- Roots: celeriac, parsnips and salsify.
- Salad: chicory, endive and salad leaves.
- Leafy greens: chard
- Stems: leeks
- Herbs: parsley, chervil, par-cel, rosemary, sage, bay and winter savory.
Sowing flowers
- Sow your sweet peas in root trainers or loo rolls, if you haven’t already sown them in the autumn.
Picking flowers
- Bulbs: crocus, snowdrops, aconites, cyclamen coum, forced early narcissus eg ‘Avalanche’. Anemone coronarias and freesias in the greenhouse. Autumn-sown hardy annuals, winter-flowering pansies, Euphorbia oblongata.
- Perennials: cynara leaves, Euphorbia characias in bud and hellebores.
- Shrubs and trees: Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’, sarcoccoca, winter-flowering honeysuckles and viburnums.
Other jobs in the garden
Insulate and clean the greenhouse. Prepare your cutting patch. Order or take chrysanthemum cuttings from over-wintered, under cover stock. Order dahlias. Prune back winterflowering shrubs when they stop flowering.
