February is the month of love and romance. Gardens tended with love make ideal venues to share romantic picnics or sun downers. Caring for your flowers this month will include watering indigenous bulbs such as Sparaxis, babianas and ixias which may be showing signs of life. Give them a general fertilizer. Deadhead daisy bushes regularly for continued flowering. If they look straggly, cut back some of the stems to young wood. Hydrangeas may be in need of pruning. Cut off spent flowers, take out any useless spindly growth and give them mulch and plenty of water. Disbud dahlias if you want big blooms for autumn.
Cut back pelargoniums to about a third. Check for mosquitoes in the little dams of water found among the leaves of cannas, strelitzias and other large-leaved plants; a drop of oil or paraffin will keep them at bay. Keep feeding, spraying and watering your roses well. Thin out straggling stems. Stake chrysanthemums as they develop or train to fill in gaps by laying them on their sides so flowers develop along the stems. Remove some buds if you want larger blooms.
Fruit growers will need to clean up any fruit lying under trees to discourage fruit fly and other insect pests. Protect bunches of grapes from birds by slipping them into pieces of old pantyhose or try scaring them away with strips of foil or colourful plastic tied to the vines.
In the potager cut finished beans to the ground rather than taking them out. Leave the roots in the ground with their nitrogen-making nodules. Plant new vegetable crops between the bean rows. Remove the seed pods of rue and fennel to prevent the garden being swamped the following year.
Maintain a lush lawn in hot, dry weather by lifting the mower blades. Apply 2:3:2 only if there is enough water available to give it a generous soaking.
Ensure flowers continue to grace your garden by sowing calendulas, cineraria, foxgloves, delphiniums, Iceland poppies, pansies, primulas, stocks and violas as well as alyssum, antirrhinum, aquilegia, Bellis perennis, candytuft, Canterbury bells, carnations, cornflowers, gaillardia, hollyhocks, larkspurs, linaria, lobelia, lupins, nemesias, pyrethrum, schizanthus and wallflowers.
In frosty areas, of which Hilton has some pockets, this is the last opportunity to sow beans. You can also sow beet, brinjals, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, gems, lettuce, leeks, marrows, parsnip, pumpkin, radish, swiss chard, spring onions and tomatoes.