Any garden jobs for February ?

I haven't ventured out yet.  I have a gooseberry bush to move to a space where it will be netted easily. The greenhouse to scrub, and by the end of the month, sowing tomatoes, chillies and maybe some early salad leaves.

I see some people getting excited by the warm weather to sow these early crops already.  But what about the light ?  Harder to provide I think than heat, without it tomates go "leggy", meaning fewer trusses before the plant hits the house roof.

We are going to be away for a while in early March, so I probably won't sow anything until we get back. I do need to prep an asparagus bed and order some crowns, though.

I've just discovered that there are allotments here. I had tried to find out when we moved and come to the conclusion there weren't any. Someone I met on Friday is going to take me to hers so I can have a look - apparently there are currently some free. This may change things for me in respect of how the garden is developed. If I do take up an allotment, I would probably use it for the long-standing crops such as the root crops, potatoes, onions and brassicas, where frequent attention isn't so vital.

I'll keep you posted.

I did buy a couple of packets of seeds yesterday!

I must admit to having sown a few tomatoes, just a few, so that I will have some early plants in case our weird weather goes on being mild. I would hate to think that I had missed the opportunity to bring a couple of early plants on in the greenhouse. But yes, the seedlings are already stretching a bit, so I will be burying them deep when I pot them on!!

Just done my seed order. This year I'm going to try growing my own cumin, which I haven't tried before, and lemon grass which I have - and allows you to make lemon grass ice cream, which is exquisite.

Also some chocolate Fatali and 7 pot yellow chillies fell into my basket ...

Still waiting to hear if I have an allotment.

Not sure what I am going to grow this year. So much infrastructure to complete, I will probably concentrate more on that. Have all my soft fruit to look forward to, and the rhubarb has several inches of stalk showing now.

Does cumin need hot weather to be successful, CH?

I will be able to answer that one later in the year DL ! I assumed it would be a bit like Dill.

Today I noticed the chilli plant I have in the conservatory is flowering Given it a top up of compost, a light prune and cleared off the aphids with soft soap. Looking forward to some early fruits !

I plan to go and have a look at the allotment this weekend, and harvest some leeks. Possibly with a fishing net

Chilli-head wrote:I plan to go and have a look at the allotment this weekend, and harvest some leeks. Possibly with a fishing net

It may not be as bad as you think - we're surrounded by floods still (though not under water ourselves thankfully), and I managed to dig the rest of my carrots up today without too much mud sticking to them.

I've got the greenhouse all clean and ready for chilli sowing !

Have you donned waders to dig up your leeks yet??

Barely ventured into the garden for weeks. Greenhouse unusable as it's mostly a store for my tools, and weather too changeable to get stuck into anything outside. And STILL waiting to hear if I have an allotment.

Bog snorkelling is about all my garden is fit for just now. My fruit bushes that I ordered have arrived so I need to get my fruit cage erected. I can at least plant up the strawberry plants as they are going in hanging baskets in the polytunnel.
I got my fruit from Primrose.co.uk and I am very impressed with the size and quality of the plants and the way they were packed.
The only things left in the garden now are some winter cabbages and Brussels sprouts, they have .some very soggy and slug eaten outer leaves but are fine in the middle.

Got the leeks. There is almost half of the bed left, and they seem still very good, so need to get on with eating them. The allotment quickly turns into a mudbath if I walk in it, so best left alone for a while. I had to remove the neighbour's fence from my plot - when I say fence, it is a ridiculous and ugly pallisade of old pallets nailed together which the previous plotholder made. Sort of glad it is gone. Might help the rest down too

Chillies and peppers are in How good it is to be sowing again.

This year I'm trying:

Pasilla
Guajillo
Mulato
Cascabel
Jalapeno
7 pot yellow
Brown fatalii
Padron

Also a long, yellow chilli that I was given a pod of, but can't remember the name. Looks like Aji Amarillo but longer. And a few sweet peppers.