Irrigation, pruning and planting lead the February backyard to-do checklist

The times are rising longer, the air is slowly warming and there’s been little rain just lately, although February is historically the wettest month of the yr.

Take note of what your backyard is telling you about its water wants. Gardeners, keep vigilant!

Irrigation

• With days nonetheless cool and the solar nonetheless low within the sky, vegetation don’t want a lot water until there’s no rain for a few weeks or a freak warmth wave. In that case, run every irrigation zone as soon as, then monitor the soil’s moisture and watch the climate to see when the vegetation want irrigation once more.

• Examine your irrigation controller to ensure all of the zones are set for winter circumstances. If the water runs greater than as soon as per week, that’s too typically.

• Change to a more recent, Wi-Fi-enabled irrigation controller. These newer merchandise have their very own app that’s simply managed out of your laptop or telephone.

• Defend your backyard and your house by including a movement sensor to your irrigation system. Circulate sensors measure how briskly or gradual water flows by means of your irrigation system and sends that info to the controller. If in case you have a gradual leak or a damaged pipe, it triggers your irrigation controller to provide you with a warning to verify the system and repair the issue.

• Earlier than the warmth and dry air of spring and summer season, replace your irrigation system to in-line drip.

  In-line drip programs are versatile tubing with emitters embedded contained in the traces. These programs are essentially the most environment friendly and best to take care of. In-line drip laid out as a grid over your complete planting mattress wets soil evenly and deeply to encourage deep, drought-resistant roots. Narrower-gauge in-line drip is designed for vegetable gardens; wider gauge works for decorative backyard beds and fruiting bushes and shrubs.

Ornamentals

• Proceed planting native vegetation such because the majestic coast dwell oak (Quercus agrifolia), lemonadeberry (Rhus integrifolia), monkey flower (Mimulus and Diplacus), Indian mallow (Abutilon palmeri), yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and buckwheat (Eriogonum). Plant into native soils. Don’t amend the planting holes, however do throw in a couple of handfuls of worm castings. Mulch after planting.

• Plant Pelargoniums, one of many teams of vegetation that we generally name geraniums, although they aren’t truly geraniums. Most Pelargoniums are very drought-tolerant and make pretty flowers. Some are aromatic, too. Strive the celery-scented Pelargonium ionidiflorum, which has tiny, vivid pink flowers, or the South African Pelargonium sidoides, with its blue-green leaves and prolific, tiny burgundy flowers. Pelargonium “Gary’s Nebula” blooms coral pink with a vivid purple pistil within the middle. All of those are stunning in a pot or edging a flower mattress.

• End pruning flowering shrubs, bushes and perennials earlier than flower buds type. If you happen to wait too lengthy, you’ll prune off flower buds. When that occurs, there received’t be any flowers or fruits this yr.

• Plant bushes! Timber — and all vegetation — sequester carbon dioxide, one of many major greenhouse gases, from the ambiance. Their shade cools your house in summer season. Timber generate the oxygen we breathe, and they’re great habitats for pollinators and different animals. And bushes are stunning!

Palm bushes whose middle fronds immediately collapse could also be infested with the lethal South American palm weevil.

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• Hold an eye fixed out for palm bushes whose middle fronds immediately collapse. That may very well be proof of the lethal, invasive South American palm weevil. Previously, it primarily attacked Canary Island date palms. Now its urge for food appears to be increasing. By the point an infection is seen, palms can’t be saved.

Initiatives

A big ceramic pot or jar can be utilized as a water function in your backyard by including a recirculating pump, maybe attracting bugs, birds or different guests.

(Getty Photos)

Stroll your backyard with an eye fixed towards tasks that may make your backyard prettier, extra welcoming, extra inventive or simply extra enjoyable.

• Use a slab of stone to span a dry stream mattress or prop it up on rocks for a welcoming bench.

• Convert an outdated fountain to a succulent planter. Make certain so as to add drainage holes earlier than you plant.

• Create a color-filled mosaic on a plain concrete or stucco wall.

• Giant, brightly glazed pottery doesn’t should be planted. Set a tall, unplanted pot in a mattress of decorative vegetation as a chunk of structure or to function contrasting texture.

• Set a big, glazed ceramic pot atop an underground basin outfitted with a recirculating pump to make a water function that pulls birds, bees, lizards and different wildlife.

Vegetable backyard

Now’s the time to plant broccoli and different late cool-season crops.

(Eduardo Contreras / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

• Plant your final cool-season crops — equivalent to kohlrabi, broccoli and cabbage — from seedlings.

• Direct-seed seedling potatoes, carrots, radishes, turnips and beets.

• Begin planting pole beans and bush beans now. Fava beans are good to plant now, too.

• If you happen to planted a canopy crop in your vegetable backyard, lower it down this month. Go away the roots in place. Put the leaves into compost or layer them onto your backyard beds to decompose in place. In about eight weeks, the beds will likely be prepared for spring and summer season veggies.

• Purchase seeds for spring and summer season greens, herbs and flowers. Don’t bounce the gun, nevertheless; wait till subsequent month to plant them.

Fruiting bushes, shrubs, vines, perennials

• Prune grapevines. Reduce the vines again to only one or two aspect branches (these are known as “laterals”). Shorten all sides department to only one or two “nodes”; nodes appear like joints however are literally scars from fallen leaves. The nodes will sprout new branches to bear this summer season’s crop.

• Proceed planting bare-root fruit bushes, blueberries, artichokes and strawberries.

• Harvest citrus. Numerous citrus are prepared to reap and eat now, together with limes, kumquats, mandarins, grapefruits, lemons, tangelos and navel oranges.

• Begin fertilizing citrus and avocado with natural citrus and avocado meals. Granulated fertilizers are best to make use of, however liquids work simply as effectively. Comply with label instructions.

• End pruning and spraying deciduous fruit bushes equivalent to peaches, pluots, apples, pears, and many others., earlier than you discover buds swell and leaves peek out.

• As soon as deciduous fruit bushes spring to life, apply the yr’s first dose of fruit tree fertilizer. Granular or liquid natural formulations are greatest. All the time comply with label instructions.

Weeds

• Sustain with weeds. Hoe them, smother them with mulch, pull them out.

• Weeds might be irritating. Right here’s what not to make use of to kill them: bleach, salt, salt water, oil, gasoline or any type of petroleum product, or family disinfectant. These merchandise are all horrible for soil. They’ll kill the helpful microbes and essential bugs that dwell in soil. Some have long-term poisonous results, too.

Nan Sterman is a backyard designer and author and host of “A Rising Ardour” on KPBS tv. For extra info, go to agrowingpassion.com and waterwisegardener.com.