February is notoriously hot everywhere, but you will simply have to resist the call of the swimming pool in your garden, or the beach, to focus on your garden! It is time to take soft cuttings, sow a first crop of winter vegetables and winter- and spring-flowering annuals in trays.
It’s a really great time to do some maintenance to prepare for the upcoming autumn months. Make sure your compost heaps are ready to receive the constant stream of leaves autumn sheds every year.
Things To Do.
- Keep your azaleas and camellias well watered to ensure a good show of flowers in winter and spring. To promote lots of blooms feed them with 5:1:5 or 3:1:5. Add additional mulch with bark chips to create an acid medium.
- Sweet peas can be sown now. Prepare a trench with kainosis kraal manure and add a lot of compost, bonemeal and an organic fertiliser like flower power to the soil. The key to success with sweet peas is an enriched and well-draining soil. Soak the seeds overnight in warm water before sowing directly in the trench.
- Try and avoid your lawn from becoming too long and then mowing it short, as this will exposing its roots to the sun. Rather mow more frequently with the blades set on high. Water deeply once a week if it has not rained and feed with a balanced fertiliser to keep it lush and actively growing. Be sure to also look out for mole crickets, ants and harvester termites.
- Watering, mulching and feeding are very important during this hot month.
- If you didn’t manage to get your edible garden started yet, you can still get going, Make sure you pay special attention to watering requirements and what will grow best by getting some advice from our friendly and knowledgeable staff, before you get started.
- Prune your summer flowering shrubs now. Things like Plumbago, Potato bush, Honeysuckle, and Durantas, will appreciate the trim and grow back fuller.
- Keep up with the dead heading of your annuals and perennials so that they keep on flowering. Allowing some annuals to go to seed will give you seedlings for next season. Many summer flowering annuals will start coming to the end of their flowering season and need to be removed, and replaced
- Remove summer vegetables that are coming to the end of their productive cycle and prepare for planting winter and spring crops.
- Look at replacing colourful annuals which have past their prime with fast-maturing, heat-tolerant, alyssum, marigolds, petunias, phlox, salvias, verbenas and zinnias.
- Trim your fuchsias by cutting them back by two nodes and feed them with an organic 3:1:5 fertiliser.
- You can also prune your roses lightly. Continue to feed and water them deeply and regularly. Don’t forget to top up your mulch.
- Keep to a regular spray program to prevent fungal outbreaks like mildew, black spot and rust; where these are troublesome, you can help preventing this by avoiding wetting the foliage, in the late afternoon and night.
For the kitchen gardener:
- Begin planting broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts for winter.
- Sow a few rows of beetroot and carrot seeds and your last bush beans.
- Plant out lettuce, Swiss chard and parsley seedlings in a cool place.
- Remove the flower stalks from rhubarb, artichokes and Swiss chard and harvest garlic.
- Look at feeding your fruit trees like plums and apricots which have finished fruiting with a 6:1:5 or 3:1:5 fertiliser or an organic fertiliser like flower power or gwano pellets.
- Thin out beetroot seedlings when they are 5–7,5cm high. Add the leaves to your salads. Some gardeners recommend soaking the seeds before sowing in drills (rows) 2,5cm apart. For really succulent beetroot, keep them constantly moist.
What to Plant
Do not plant winter annuals to early. They don’t like the heat. Rather plant another batch of petunias, marigolds or vincas. They will still give you lots of pleasure before winter.
What to Sow
Sow spinach, Globe Artichokes, Parsley, Carrots and radish. If you haven’t already why not try companion planting, you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Continue sowing regular crops of quick herbs like coriander and rocket.
What to Spray:
Keep roses well watered and spray weekly against fungi. A great product is Rosecare plus.
Pay particular attention to redspider mites on your roses. And be sure to check the undersides of the leaves.
Be on the lookout for fungal infections like fairy ring, dollar spot and brown patches on your lawn.
Lookout for mole crickets, ants and harvester termites, if you are noticing problems why not pop into Tuingenoot and pick up everything you need.
What to Feed:
Feed containers and hanging baskets fortnightly with a liquid fertiliser, this will help aid the plants in continuous happy growth and blooms.
Lay a thick layer of organic matter around the trees as far as there branches have spread. Feed with a complete fertilizer like 2:3:2 once a month.
Feed fruiting plants such as peppers, tomatoes, eggplants and cucumbers, in order to get a good crop.
Camellias and azaleas will bloom in late winter and spring. Promote the blooms now. Use 5.1.5 or 3.1:5; make sure that the plants do not suffer from drought. Add a mulching of acid compost.
