Garden To-Do / February
February is usually our warmest month, but the smart gardener is already looking past it. Autumn is the Eastern Cape's best planting season, and the work you do now, building soil and starting seedlings, pays off the moment the heat breaks.
The warmest stretch of the year, with daytime highs around 24°C and warm, humid nights around 18 to 19°C. It is also one of our most humid months, which the subtropical plants enjoy even when we do not.
The summer easterly pattern continues, often strongest in the afternoons. Water early, keep mulch topped up, and give hedges and screens a light trim so the wind passes through rather than rocking them loose.
Rain comes in occasional thundery or frontal bursts rather than steady soaks. Do not rely on a brief shower; check below the mulch, and if the soil is dry a finger deep, water properly.
Keep deep-watering young trees through the last of the heat. February is a good month to walk the garden and decide where an autumn-planted tree could give shade or wind shelter, so you are ready when planting season arrives.
Lightly prune summer-flowering shrubs as they finish to keep their shape. Start preparing new beds for autumn: clear, weed, and work in generous compost now so the soil is alive and ready in March.
Refresh tired summer beds with a feed and a hard deadhead. Towards the end of the month, sow winter and spring annuals like pansies, violas, poppies and calendulas in seed trays, ready to plant out when the weather cools.
Get winter crops going in trays: cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower sown now will be sturdy seedlings by autumn. In the beds, sow carrots, beetroot, spinach and lettuce, and keep harvesting summer crops regularly so they keep producing.
Order or buy in compost this month, autumn planting eats it. Turn the compost heap, keep new plantings mulched, and water deeply in the cool of the morning. If you are going away, group pots in light shade and soak them well before you leave.
Indigenous plant of the month
This is one to plant now and thank yourself for in winter. The weeping sage is a graceful, fast-growing evergreen shrub with glossy dark leaves, silvery underneath, on softly arching branches. From late autumn, through winter and into early spring it covers itself in sprays of small cream flowers with one of the loveliest scents of any indigenous plant, carrying right across the garden on a still morning.
Planted in February with plenty of compost and regular water while it settles, it has the whole of autumn to root before its first flowering. Use it as a screen, an informal hedge or a feature in a big mixed border, it can reach around 4 m if left alone, or be pruned yearly to size, which also encourages denser growth and better flowering. The flowers draw butterflies and insects, which in turn bring insect-eating birds like robins and boubous. It is both frost- and drought-hardy once established.
Plant information with thanks to PlantZAfrica (pza.sanbi.org).
See you at the nursery,
Clint
The Farmyard Nursery
Need a hand getting started? WhatsApp us or visit the nursery, and we will point you to the right plants for the season.
