What's a gardener to do when the weather changes so dramatically from one week to the next during our constantly changing winter? Not too worry. Plants are able to withstand wide swings in temperature because plants acclimatized themselves for winter way back in October and November as the day length shortened and the temperature slowly grew colder, signalling to plants that winter's afoot and it's time to sleep. Since we live on the warm coast, freezing temperatures never last very long as the warm Pacific Ocean air pushes onto the coast, forcing out the colder air, making transitions in temperature the norm for February in the garden. As long as the temperature gradually declines and does not suddenly swing from plus 10 to minus 10 in one day, then plants will adjust. That's not to say that cold temperatures do not exert damaging effects on some plants. Primula flowers can be damaged by sharp drops in temperature but only the flowers are damaged and the plant will remain alive. Crocus and hellebore flowers may get frosted but since they are early spring flowering plants they are adapted to cold temperatures. Tender plants like bananas, tree ferns and some Mediterranean plants are the most susceptible to wide swings in winter temperatures. Such plants should have been winter protected way back in November, it's a bit late now.
There are several things to do in the garden during February. Applying dolomite lime to the garden and the lawn is recommended now but not as a regular annual practice.
Lawns do not need to be limed continually year after year without testing the soil's pH.
Too much lime is not a good thing and correcting a high soil pH is harder than correcting a low soil pH.
Always test your soil to determine the pH before applying lime to understand if lime is needed. If neither you nor your lawn maintenance contractor knows how to test soil pH, then it would seem that no one knows what they are doing and money and resources are being wasted to accomplish nothing but invoice generation. Be informed, do pH testing using a pH pen (available from some garden centres), using a soil laboratory test (send to a soil lab) or at minimum and worst case use litmus paper to at least determine the soil's pH range before you lime. All residential lawn and garden soils in our region should have a pH between 5.8 and 6.8 depending on the crop being grown.
Lawns like a pH of about 6.5. Normal shrub and perennial beds will grow well at pH 5.8 to 6.5. Rhodos grow well at pH 5.8 to 6.0, plus or minus a bit. And when was the last time you limed your garden plants? That's garden plants not lawn. There is no need to apply acidifying rhodo fertilizer because we already have natural soil acidifiers built into our climate in the form of abundant rainfall that leaches the soil pH downward toward acidic.
February is also the month to prune the many deciduous shrubs, fruit trees and climbing vines we grow in our gardens. Wait until the end of the month for hydrangea and clematis pruning so we can pass through the worst of the winter weather. But prune now fruit trees, kiwi, wisteria, mock orange, red stem dogwood shrubs, forsythia, other hardy shrubs and snow damaged plants. Be careful when pruning spring flowering shrubs now; those plants should be pruned by cutting offending stems back to a lower point or to the ground instead of shearing their little heads off. Pruning by death shearing on forsythia, camellia, rhododendron, mock orange, azalea and all other spring blooming shrubs will remove most of the spring blossoms, which is fine if you don't like flowers.
At this time of year the one thing most people don't regularly do is transplant, renovate garden beds or build new garden beds by killing lawn. It's important to accomplish transplanting now before the garden begins growing next month. Since plants are currently in full dormancy, transplanting now has little effect on their growth and any tree, shrub, perennial or vine can be safely and effectively transplanted now as long as the temperature is above zero. But dig deep and dig wide to obtain the best sized and shaped root ball you can physically lift for transplanting to give the transplant a good start on life.
With winter almost over, the days growing longer and spring just around the corner, February is a prime productivity month in the garden. So put down those seed catalogues and get out in the garden and mulch beds, build or fix something and prune or transplant in anticipation of the coming spring.
