What are you waiting for … only 332 more days until Christmas … so there’s no time to waste.
But even more important to those love-birds amongst us, it’s Valentine’s Day on February.
The time of cupid, chocolates, schmaltzy cards and flowers.
My tip is give your beloved a potted flowering orchid.
They will flower for ages, and then keep them in a sheltered, well lit (not direct sun) spot, water and fertilise and they will flower again next year.
So, for the other 27 days of February, here’s a few hints on what you could be doing in your yard.
• Citrus trees are heavy feeders and need fertilising now. Use a specific citrus fertiliser and apply at the rate on the bag.
• Fertilise your Camellia sasanqua bushes as the buds appear. Use a special camellia and azalea fertiliser to maintain slightly acidic soil.
• Remove the spent flowering stems of agapanthus. You can collect the seed and grow them yourself if you wish – they germinate readily.
• Prepare bulb beds and beds for spring-flowering annuals with deep digging, addition of organic matter and mulching. Start looking in books or on the internet for different spring flowering bulbs you might like to order this month and plant in autumn.
• Once the sweet corn has finished, start to prepare it for peas and snow pea crops, by digging in some garden lime to raise the pH level in preparation for March/April planting. Chop up the old sweet corn plants and dig them back into the garden as organic matter. A mower with a catcher does a good job of this if you don’t have a mulcher.
• Take softwood cuttings of geraniums and pelargonium so that you can strike them and create new plants.
• Sow broccoli and cabbage seeds now and raise them for planting in March and April.
• Start a winter vegetable garden bed from scratch by layering sugarcane mulch, mushroom compost and manure to a depth of 70cm. Keep moist and allow it all to decompose. By March it will be a luscious organic soil ready for planting.
• Trim back wayward shoots of wisteria to keep it under control.
• Keep dead-heading roses and lightly prune to prolong the late summer flush.
• Citrus Leaf Miner causes ugly distorted leaves with silvery trails in the leaf tissue. Meyer lemons are particularly susceptible. Pest Oil is a non-toxic control, spray when new growth is about 1 cm long, reapply every 2-3 weeks. February is a crucial time to spray.
• Prune mango trees after the last harvest and fertlise around the drip line.
• Each month between January and May, apply 20g of pelletised manure around your pawpaw trees. Treat with a copper spray to prevent black spot.
• If you haven’t done so, prune your poinsettias (including Snowflake) to promote new growth for the next flowering.
