John’s February jobs for the garden…

It’s lovely to notice the daylight making a welcome return! February is always a very exciting time in the gardening world. It can be a real transition month. As soon as the temperature begins to rise above 6 °C, that’s the signal for plants to start accelerating their growth, alongside animals and insects waking out of hibernation too.

Here’s what you can do this month…

• Slug defences - Apply spent coffee grounds, eggshells, and copper bands, along with encouraging frogs and hedgehogs to help defend slug-prone plants. 

• Gather rotten organic matter - a vital ingredient to help you enrich your soil by digging it in.

• Winter weeding - The frost helps make it easy to lift seeding weeds growing on the surface of beds.

• Composting - the perfect way to make your own compost with any garden waste or food scraps from the kitchen.

• Clean the greenhouse - helping prepare the space for early sowing and growing.

• Grit paths - with lots of frost on the way, it’ll help keep your paths safe.

• Bug Hotels - They needn't be anything elaborate; make a stack of logs and branches to help encourage bugs, which will help fight other nuisance garden pests.

• Chit potatoes - place your seed potatoes indoors in an old egg box to help them sprout. 

• Plant hardy plants - anything flowering now will give you colour again at this time of year.

• Install a sundial - a graceful and natural way of telling the time in the garden on a sunny day.