Gardening in February and March

February is rather an odd month... some days are stuck in the depths of winter but then others give hints of the spring days to come. Then along comes March and you start noticing that the days are getting longer and, hopefully, the weather is turning milder. It can be amazing what changes you'll see in Nature over these eight weeks - the world begins to stir from its winter slumbers.

So what can the gardener be up to now? During the beginning of February, there are a few jobs to be getting on with outside, some of which are the last chances to do winter jobs that you might not have had the opportunity to do before thanks to Christmas and New Year distractions. For example, if you've not yet pruned your raspberries from last year down to about six inches, you've still got a couple of weeks to do it before the plants start to come out of their dormant period and shoot away for the new season. Whilst doing this you can check for any offshoots that the plants might have thrown up - these can be cut out and either used as new plants in another bed, passed on to friends or chopped up and composted.

If you have apples and pear trees that need pruning you'll need to do it at the very latest by the end of February, as they will soon be springing into growth. Either shred the prunings and add them to the compost bin (assuming they aren't diseased - burn them if they are) or keep them to use as pea sticks on the plot. If you have hedges that need a cut you might just get one in at the start of February. This will be after the wildlife has stripped most of the fruit and nuts but before the birds start to nest in the spring. Definitely don't trim hedges between early March and late July to allow the tweeters to raise their families.

Late winter is also when you can be getting a head start on sorting out your organic material supply for the year. The organic garden's ‘engine' are the compost and manure heaps as these provide the bulky organic matter that provides nutrients, improves soil structure and feeds some of the small helpers such as worms and insects. After clearing up the plot in late autumn/early winter you might now find that your compost bins are pretty full - during the colder winter weather the composting process in smaller domestic bins often slows right down. If you are finding that you are still generating compostable materials from the garden and kitchen but are running out of room for them in your bins you've got a few options.

The first option is simply to acquire or build some more compost bins! The organic garden can consume large volumes of organic material, so having several bins is a good idea. Plastic bins are available via most council waste and recycling services, but if you can get your hands on four or five wooden pallets you can soon knock them into a great square compost bin. I personally actually prefer the wooden bins over the plastic ones we have - not only are they free and not reliant on plastic usage and shipping, but they also have the practical advantage that they can be much easier to empty out once they have brewed the compost nicely. They do tend to work best as a bulk composter though rather than as a continuous cycle. If you've only got a small amount of compostables that you generate regularly (such as kitchen peelings) you might prefer one of the plastic ‘daleks' with the door at the base that allows you to retrieve finished compost without having to remove the unfinished material above it.

Of course not everyone has the space for another compost bin, so we move onto option two: spread some of the content of your existing bins over some of your beds. Whilst the material might only be partially composted at the moment, if you spread it over beds that you won't be planting into for several months it will have time to continue to decompose on the soil surface. The worms can also get in on the action, pulling material down into the ground and meaning that you won't need to do any digging yourself. It doesn't look terribly attractive but on an allotment in winter that isn't often much of a consideration. Of course you can make it look neater by covering it with weed supressing fabric pinned down over the compost covered bed.

Option three for dealing with fresh compostable material is to do a bit of preparation for one of the summer crops: the runner beans. If you can dig a trench a spit or two deep under where you plan to grow your beans this year, you can start to fill it with veg peelings right now. Simply throw them in the trench and then, once the trench has filled up in a month or two, cover with the excavated soil. By the time you come to sow the beans the ground will have warmed up and this material will be rotting down nicely. The beans will appreciate the nutrients that the rotting materials can provide them with, plus the organic matter in the trench will help retain moisture around their roots, which can help them survive dry summer periods.

As well as dealing with compost, many gardeners will also be making sure that they can get a supply of manure for their plot if they haven't done so earlier in the winter. Ideally you'd have wanted to get some in autumn or winter if it was ‘fresh' so that it could sit and rot down for five or six months. However, if you can get some well rotted muck now, you'll be set up for the spring. Whilst you can buy bags of farmyard manure from garden centres, it is often cheaper to hunt around for local stables, smallholders and farms that can provide you with either bags or trailer loads of muck.

It is worth asking whoever supplies you with manure if they have fed or bedded the animals using grass or hay that has come from pastures sprayed with aminopyralid based weed killers such as Forefront, Pharaoh or Banish. These weed killers have caused problems for growers for the last few years as they pass straight through the digestive system of the animals and can then attack broad leafed plants like peas, beans, potatoes and tomatoes. Composting the manure in a heap for a few months does not seem to break the aminopyralids down, so even well rotted muck can cause problems. The affected weed killers had been withdrawn but last year the Government allowed the manufacturer, Dow AgroSciences, to start supplying them again so unfortunately you might still come across infected material.

You can test for aminopyralids by filling four plant pots with a mixture of half multipurpose compost and half suspect manure, and another four pots with just plain multipurpose compost. Pop three or four broad bean seeds into each pot and grow them on as normal in a propagator or greenhouse. If aminopyralids are present in the manure the leaves of the beans grown in the manure mix will start to curl and distort - you can compare them to the beans grown in the clean multipurpose compost.

If you do get lumbered with a batch of aminopyralid contaminated manure there's not much point trying to return it and getting a refund - most suppliers are as much victims of this chemical as the gardeners and the smaller farmer/stables/smallholders aren't usually making much, if any, profit on selling gardeners manure. All you can do is to spread it out over an area where you aren't planning to grow any susceptible crops and then dig it into the ground as some soil microbes can break down the aminopyralids. You need to turn over this area several times over the course of the next few months to ensure that the manure is broken up and fully exposed to the soil microbes.

OK, that's organic matter sorted out, but what about actually starting to grow some stuff? If you've got a cold frame, greenhouse or polytunnel and the weather isn't absolutely freezing in February, you might be able to start off a first crop of early carrots, using a variety such as Early Nantes. The soil needs to reach 10C at least though before carrot seeds will germinate, so if the weather is poor bide your time and wait for the ground to heat up a bit. Don't sow all the seed in one go - do small sowings every few weeks. This will not only let you overcome failed crops when sudden periods of cold cut down germination rates, but also means that if everything does start growing you'll be able to get successional harvesting later in the year, rather than a sudden glut.

Some folk get their first sowings of tomatoes started off indoors at the same time, especially if they can provide the seedlings with a bit of heat to get them going. Remember that whilst window sills can provide light and warmth during the day they can still get quite cold in the middle of the night, so give the seedlings some protection by putting them into a propagator or by putting the top half of an old 2-litre pop bottle over the top of the plant pot.

As February moves into March, or earlier if you are in an area where the weather is mild, and you don't have waterlogged soils, you can start to sow some early peas and broad beans outside. For the beans we tend to dib holes a couple of inches deep and drop a couple of individual beans in each one. However, for peas it tends to be easier to use a rake or spade to draw a very shallow but wide drill, scatter the peas along this and then carefully rake some of the soil back over it. Give the beds a bit of protection with some cloches or small polythene tunnels to help get them going - it will also help protect them from the attention of hungry birds. Once the plants are really coming up, supply them with some supports to grow up. In similar conditions you can also sow some parsley in the herb garden.

Once March is in full swing the range of things that are coming into season for sowing expands somewhat. Brussel sprouts, leeks, lettuce, rocket, oriental leaves, onions, salad radishes and summer spinach can all be sown in trays and modules, and you can still get tomatoes sown if you didn't do it in February. Out in the herb garden, split existing clumps of chives (often there's plenty to share with friends - they are incredibly productive and tough herbs). Whilst there you can also split up clumps of bergamot and sorrel, and layer shoots of marjoram.

During late January and early February is when many people buy their seed potatoes. There is then the great debate about whether to chit or not. Chitting is simply the process of putting the seed potatoes into a cool, light, frost free place to allow some of the ‘eyes' to start shooting. Doing this is supposed to give the potatoes a bit of a head start, as the chitted potatoes are planted with the small dark green shoots already developing. Various people have done tests and the jury is really still out - it seems to help more with the first and second earlies than the main crop. The first and second early, main crop and late crop designations basically distinguish how long the variety takes to mature - first and second earlies tend to be shorter than main crop, but main crop potatoes are supposed to store better. I have to say that we don't bother with main crop spuds ourselves - the dreaded blight destroyed the whole main crop for a couple of years, whereas first and second early crops are developed and lifted before it really gets too bad. And we still find the first and seconds last quite well - I'm writing this in January and we're still baking, roasting and chipping our way through our five sacks of spuds from last year!

When the weather starts to improve in mid-March the early potato varieties can start to go in the ground. We usually dig a trench a spit or so (approx 12") deep and then fill the bottom of it with a couple of inches (5cm) of well rotted manure, garden compost or leaf mould. Last year I copied a neat trick that a neighbouring plot holder introduced us to: putting a layer of paper into the bottom of the trench first before putting the organic material on top (we used a couple of Yellow Pages telephone directories torn apart, but newspapers laid four or five sheets thick would be just as good). On our very sandy soil this is a good idea as the paper helps trap some of the moisture and nutrients from the manure in the bottom of the trench, ready for the potatoes to take advantage of later.

Next pop the potatoes into it 12 inches (30cm) apart and draw some of the soil back over them leaving a low ridge. Don't worry about leaving little hillocks alongside the filled trenches - you can use those to supply the soil for ‘earthing up' the spuds later in the season (a process that encourages more potato tubers to form, weeds the plot and keeps sunlight away from the uppermost tubers). Alternatively if using raised beds, cover the bed with cardboard and a thick (6 inches/15cm) layer of muck or compost and then punch a hole through the card and drop the seed potato in (green shoots upwards!). This technique means that the cardboard will keep weeds down and moisture in, and will slowly rot down under the muck which will leech nutrients into the bed underneath.

Getting some things growing now really makes you realise that the new season is just around the corner - it'll be summer before you know it!

Jim'll

Seedling and Daffodil photos (c) Jilly Graham 2010

Our affiliate merchant AMAZON has lots of books and DVDs for sale around this subject. The Big Green Idea is paid a commission if you choose to buy via our links. These are not recommendations by the author and are chosen purely to give a representation.