Garden Jobs for February: Pruning and Prepping for Spring!

Hey guys, it's Marta. Welcome to 2024. We are starting our gardening season and we'll be posting videos regularly. Today I woke up, I went out to film the video and I just heard the birds singing like the, you know, the spring song and I was so excited. February is in our country now such a warm month, not a typical one, so I'm doing a lot of gardening jobs exactly now and today I hope you will join me and I will tell you what I'm planning for this month. Let's go. When we moved here around 18 years ago, February in Poland, in this part of the country, were extremely cold. We usually had a lot of snow, we had temperatures like minus 15, minus 25, one year there was minus 30, so that was a totally different February than we have now. In the last years, February's were more similar than the ones in England, so we have mild weather, usually it's around five degrees Celsius during the day, maybe some minus during the night, but like minus two, minus four, so this is a typical weather for the marches that we had a lot of years ago or even April's, so I'm doing a lot of jobs now. I started testing them few years ago if it's okay, will the plants be happy if I prune them early and they bloomed just the same as I was pruning them in previous marches, so I'm doing that now and today let's talk about what you can do if you have similar weather to me. What is this snowman feature here? This is my hydrangea, this is otaxa, this is a hydrangea, garden hydrangea or mob hydrangea that blooms on last year's wood, but also on this year's wood. This is a wonderful variety which I love, but with mob head hydrangeas in a climate like ours that we have a lot of frost during the spring months, I usually use this white cloth for protection and last year I left it without any protection and I had some of the blooms, the early blooms on the last year's wood, they were not as good as the previous years when I was wrapping it around it, so this year I will leave this for some time, especially for those harder frosts during the spring and we'll see how she will go. So these mob hydrangeas I leave alone now, this one is wrapped in white cloth and some of the others are in the greenhouse, they are overwintering them, but my main focus is on the things I can do right now and some of them are really meant to be, this is the last minute to do them. Some things are meant to be done right now, so this is the last call, pruning your maples. We prune the maples in the winter because when you prune them in spring, they will start crying, they are releasing a lot of the juices and this is not good for them, so if you have trees to prune, such as maples, you have to do it in January, but if you missed that, you can try in the beginning of February, looking at the climate you live in, of course I'm talking about my Polish climate, if you live in a warmer one, probably you should have done it some time ago, but if it's colder, you can still do it. This is my maple in front of my house, I don't prune it every year, I've done a severe pruning last year because it goes to the road a bit too much, this year I will just prune a few of the branches, those ones, the long ones that are not forming a perfect shape of a ball, so a few of them, but I think this is the last moment to do it and it looks beautiful, it grows, I really love it, but it likes to grow into the road, so I sometimes have to tell him to stop. As I'm standing here, I can see my dogwoods, they will also be pruned really really hard, let's see what I do with them. I think I'm operating my body on the sun, I'm getting so much energy on those birds, this is incredible. If you grow your dogwoods and you have not pruned them, you probably have seen that they don't have that vibrant color they used to when they were younger, so if you have your dogwoods, try pruning them really really hard. I prune them 20-30 centimeters from the ground, really hard prune and then I get during one season this type of bush with beautiful vibrant stems which look incredible and you can also use them for your Christmas decorations and they give incredible winter interest in your garden. Let's go back into the garden, for those of you who like pruning, let's talk about that more. In February I look at my lawn and I think how was my lawn doing during the year. If I had a lot of moss, if I had a lawn that I wasn't too happy about and sometimes I checked the pH of the soil, if it was too ericaceous, the soil was too ericaceous, I would use dolomite. This is good for your lawn and for those of your borders that are too ericaceous and you need it to be more alkaline for some of your plants. With my lawn I use dolomite or lime, but I think dolomite is better, every two years and it seems to work in my garden, but you always have to focus that your garden is not my garden. It's best to do soil testing, to look at how your plants are behaving and the type of plants you are growing. I would use dolomite for example for my lavender, but I would never use it for my hydrangeas because this is not a thing you want to use there. You have to be also very careful when using dolomite or lime not to use your fertilizer during the next six weeks. The fertilizer will not work properly if you use it right after the dolomite, so please remember about that. When the weather is right, by right I mean we have plus temperatures, so no freezing temperatures during the day and preferably during the night. If there is supposed to be frost during the night I would like it to be minus one, minus two, minus three max celsius and then I go to my pruning mode. First I'd like to talk about pruning of my fruit trees and the fruit bushes like currants or gooseberries. This is a perfect time, usually end of February, but I really look for the window of a week with plus temperatures during the day and during the night. During all of the years of running a youtube channel about gardens in Polish, I got thousands of questions. I am so afraid to prune in winter, the frost will come, it will kill my plant. Those plants that I'm pruning now, they are really hardcore plants, so probably if you even pruned them in the autumn they would also survive, but the window of pruning is important to me, so I want the temperatures to be plus, no hard frosts and also dry conditions. This is the perfect time, you will not have any problems with that, there will not be frost damage, but the more we go in the next months we'll get some frost. In February we'll get frost, in March, in April and even in May, but the window of pruning needs to be very calm, so we cut, we do something to the plant and it has time to callus over, the wound is closed and then it will respond really well to those light frosts that will come in the coming weeks or even months. This is my espalier apple tree, I love that, the apples are so good, this is golden delicious. I've been pruning it since it was a baby and I prune it a few times a year, because this is not like a typical apple tree. So the heavy prune was done during the summer and now I will be just pruning back this weepy growth and checking where are the buds and how the pruning is supposed to be done. I think I will show you that in a video, how exactly I do it, because on Polish channel I've shown that and I don't think I've shown that on the English channel, so this will be the thing I'll be showing you next. Then I'm pruning my currants and I also pruning my blueberries, maybe we'll mix that, we'll do a video with the apple tree and the blueberries, so you'll have to join me in the next one. Now let's go to hydrangeas, this is a lot of pruning. In the last few years I was testing types of pruning of hydrangeas with hydrangeas Annabelle, strong Annabelle and all of those panicle hydrangeas, not the mop heads and I've been testing pruning them in the fall, I've been pruning them in January, in February, in March and the results are... it doesn't really matter. They all bloom the same, I did not have any problems with them, so I am very flexible with my pruning. I prune when I have my time and the window of the weather is perfect for that, so dry, no frosts for a few days and if I see that kind of weather in the forecast I just get my pruners and I get really, really with my pruning. I have more than a hundred of hydrangeas, so this is why I was testing, I was not worried because there are so many of them and I hope my tests will be good, of good use to you. The first thing I do in February when I jump into my garden, I check of how many bulbs are emerging. Do I see those tiny little heads of them? There are so many alliums, crocuses, tulips, daffodils, everything is just coming up and this is why I try to clean all of my borders early because I don't want to, you know, smash them because there are hundreds of them, so I try to do all of my pruning early, all of the cleaning of the perennials, so the bulbs that are emerging are not disturbed with my heavy feet. Whenever spring comes and I ask my viewers about their questions, one of the most asked ones is about the emerging bulbs of tulips or whatever bulbs they have and they are always afraid because the frost is coming, should they cover it, they are afraid that they will be ruined, especially if they are growing them for the first time. So I did the tests for all of you guys and I've tried covering the emerging bulbs when the frosts were coming and I tried with white cloth, I tried with cardboard, I tried with the pots upside down, everything. One year I did not have time or I did not have enough cardboard or white cloth and I just covered half of this border, that was minus eight celsius and part left, I left just uncovered and I was like okay, they will die. Nothing happened, they looked just the same except of my time that I spent, like two hours covering everything. So from that moment I am very chilled about covering my emerging bulbs. Maybe sometimes you will get something on the leaf, a bit of damage of the leaf, but it will not influence the flowers. If you had the flowers emerging and the petals were open and then you will get a hard frost like minus eight, it might look worse. But with this just emerging, you know, their little heads just going out from the soil, nothing really happens. So I am very very chill in this subject. One note about pruning early and cleaning your borders. This is what I do because of my bulbs. I have a few thousand bulbs in my garden, so when I'm doing things like pruning or cleaning, I have to walk on my borders. And when I walk, if I'm not careful and even if I'm very careful, I will smash something with my feet. So I try to do it really early, but this is not a must. You can also clean your borders in March and it's not something you really need to do now. This is my way of doing things, so it's good for me and I also have this longer time to work in the garden. My garden is quite big, there is a lot to be done and I just need my strength for all of that. So if I have a nice day in February like today, I can go clean something a bit for like two, three hours, next day, next day until March. I don't go into the garden for eight hours and, you know, I just come back home and I'm like done with everything. February is also the last call for pruning your wisteria. We prune our wisterias first in the summer to the fifth bud and then to the third, after the third bud in late winter. So that like the beginning of February will be perfect for that. This wisteria was left alone and I did not prune it, so I will need to do a lot of pruning here. It is also intermingled with my chair, so that will be a job for the next few days to be done. When February is warm and dry, I also clean my hedges, like I have tuya and yew hedges, so I clean all of the dead inside of them, the dead, everything, like there is a lot, this is a lot of cleaning. And then when it's dry and it's warm, we also prune them and I try to prune all of the plants that I can as early as I can and I leave all of those really, you know, the princesses that are very frost tender, I leave them for March and even April. Like stippa, I will just prune stippa in the beginning of April, same with lavender. I really leave those for the last and the more hardy ones I prune as early as I can. Okay Marta, but what are you sowing? I really need to start sowing my flowers or my vegetables. So in February I will be sowing my tomatoes at the end of February, around the 20th, my peppers, then I will be sowing from the flowers. I start with sweet peas and I sow them in February and then I will be doing the anemones and the ranunculus, this is the things that I do in February. I really wait with my sowing until the really last days of February or at the beginning of March. Why? Because the daylight hours will be getting longer and it is so much better for the plants. So when I'm sowing them, I can really, first I put them in somewhere warm so they sprout and I'm using the lights usually for that in the garage that I have. And when they sprout, I really very, very fast move them into my greenhouse. And in the greenhouse they will have better temperatures, the light levels will be nice. So this is for me, this is really the end of February, beginning of March. But I have to remember that when I move them into my greenhouse, the greenhouse needs to be spot clean. So when I have a warm day like today, I will get my things and I will clean everything in my greenhouse so it is prepared, it is ready for my plants in March. And also I will go through all of those pots and everything that I have, like pruners, I will clean all of that so I am also ready to work and everything is prepared. And this little structure that we have in the garden, I call it the gardener's house. I have all of my tools there, all of the fertilizers. I just go part by part and I check if everything is fine, if everything is ready for the season. Okay guys, please let me know how do your February look in your country. Of course we all live in different parts of the world and I love, love, love reading your comments, how your garden looks like, which part of the world it is in and how different our experiences are. So please let me know in the comments. I'm really happy we are back for the season and I'm so happy when I see the sun, I'm like sun battery operated, when I see the sun I have the energy of a giant and if it's gloomy, if it's dark, I'm like nothing. So please let me know in the comments and we'll see you in the next one. They will be appearing on Saturdays and I hope we'll be having a wonderful season full of energy and beautiful blooms. See you in the next one. Bye.