February

February

In the greenhouse

• Check greenhouse heaters are working efficiently and you aren’t wasting heat.
• Improve insulation in your greenhouse by lining it with bubble wrap and sealing the windows

Tip: Forcing Rhubarb 

Dig a portion of dormant rhubarb and plant it in a large bucket. Block out any light by covering it with black polythene and place it under the greenhouse bench. Remember to water it regularly and pink stems of tender rhubarb will develop much earlier than those in the garden. This will exhaust the plant, so it’s best to throw it away once it has finished cropping.

Fruit and Vegetables

• Finish digging over empty beds to get the soil ready for sowing and planting
• Sow onions and leeks in pots in a windowsill propagator or heated greenhouse
• Plant new fruit trees, bushes and cane fruits. You can carry on planting bare-root fruit trees until mid to late March
• Net fruit and vegetable crops to keep the birds off
• Divide large clumps of rhubarb and replant new sections
• Cover seakale and rhubarb with forcing pots to exclude light
• Prune side shoots on trained forms of gooseberry back to two or three buds
• Crops to sow outside under cloches now include hardy peas, broad beans, radishes, parsnips and spinach
• Chit potato tubers

Tip: Chop back blackcurrents

These delicious fruits are packed with vitamin C and are ideal in summer puddings. Keep bushes productive by pruning out about a quarter of the oldest woody stems every winter. This encourages new shoots to grow from the base. Aim to keep the bush upright by cutting back low-lying shoots. On established bushes, remove the very oldest stems, shorten new growth to about 3” from their based and prune side shoots back to just one bud.