Jobs to do in February

As long as the ground isn’t frozen, you can prepare seedbeds this month.  If it’s a new plot, test your soil before the season starts. It’s also your last chance to winter prune fruit.

Sowing and planting

Fruit

• Plant new fruit trees, bushes, canes and vines if the soil isn’t waterlogged or frozen. If you’ve ordered bare root fruit trees, they should be delivered this month if not already.

Vegetables

• Chit early seed potato tubers as soon as you have them.

• From mid-February onwards sow tomato, chilli,  cucumber and aubergine seed for greenhouse growing.

• Plant out garlic and shallots in light soils only; heavy soils need longer to warm up.
• ​Prepare outdoor seedbeds ready for sowing.

• If you have light (sandy) soil and live in a mild part of the UK, you can sow broad beans, carrots, parsnips, early beetroot, salad onions, lettuces, radish, spinach and summer cabbages outside. Otherwise, it’s best to wait until the soil has begun to warm up in March or April.

• Peas can be sown in the greenhouse in old (but clean) guttering that has had drainage holes drilled in the bottom.

• Plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers.

Pruning and training

Fruit

• Prune citrus trees, thinning out any overcrowded branches and improving the shape of the canopy.

• This is your last chance to winter prune apples, pears, medlars and quinces.

• This is your last chance to prune established autumn-fruiting raspberries.

• Prune back newly planted raspberries to 30cm (12in).

• This is your last chance to winter prune red currants, white currants and gooseberries.

Prevention

• Check netting is secure over brassicas to avoid pigeon damage.

• Protect any outdoor almond, peach, apricot and nectarine blossom from frost on particularly cold nights with an old bedsheet or re-used fleece, but make sure insects can access the flowers for pollination.

• Pick yellowing leaves off Brussels sprouts and other brassicas promptly, to prevent spread of grey mould and brassica downy mildew.

• Remove any dead plant material from the previous growing season from the vegetable plot.

• Clear weeds from under young/establishing fruit trees and bushes and apply a layer of organic matter mulch.

• Check stored fruit and remove any showing signs of rot.

General care

• Re-cut and straighten turf edges to beds.

Fruit

• Untie trained/festooned fruit tree branches that have set into position. Check ties and staking on fruit trees and loosen or refasten where necessary.

• Harvest citrus fruit when ready (once they have reached full size and developed a rich skin colour).

• Cover outdoor, soil-grown strawberries with cloches for an earlier crop.

• Tip back summer-fruiting raspberry canes to 15cm (6in) above their top support wire.

Vegetables

• Plan a crop rotation system for your vegetable plot.

• Rake in lime if you have very acidic soil (below pH 5.5) and are growing brassicas.

• Prepare new asparagus beds.

• Feed spring cabbages with an organic liquid feed high in nitrogen, such as poultry manure pellets or homemade nettle liquid fertiliser.