Our winter annuals don’t always thrive in the cold weather, but some do better than others. Pansies and violas struggle valiantly to rebound on warmer days, but Swiss chard and giant purple mustard won’t look good until spring if they do come back. If you have winter annuals with damage, clean up the damaged foliage, fertilize on a mild winter day, and water if it gets dry. If the damage is on permanent plants in the landscape, ignore the damaged foliage until new growth begins in the spring. Pruning them back now will remove any buffer the damaged leaves are providing. Hopefully, the damage will be minimal, or even better, you won’t have any severe winter weather—keep your fingers crossed! Pay attention to weather forecasts, and if shallow temperatures are predicted and you haven’t gotten ample rainfall, water your container plants and any newly planted trees or shrubs. If plants are bone dry going into a hard freeze, you stand the chance of having more burned foliage.
February is a big month in the gardening world, with many pruning chores taking top priority. Late February is the time to prune fruit trees, blueberry bushes, and grape vines. Proper pruning ensures maximum performance. The quality and the size of the harvested fruit will be better if you know how to prune it.
Pruning is not limited to fruit crops. All roses need annual pruning as well, and it is recommended that you prune butterfly bush (buddleia), summer spirea, and ornamental grasses back hard each year. Butterfly bush and summer blooming spirea plants bloom on new growth. Cutting them back hard keeps the plants more compact but covered with blooms. Ornamental grasses die close to the soil line each winter, so removing the old foliage makes way for new growth the following growing season. If other summer blooming shrubs need pruning, this too should be done before new development really kicks in. This list of shrubs includes crape myrtles, althea (rose-of-Sharon), Clethra (summer sweet), Callicarpa (French mulberry or beauty berry), and the Panicle hydrangeas such as Limelight or Pinky Winky. Don’t prune the big leaf hydrangeas unless all their new growth begins from the soil line. There are numerous types of hydrangeas, so you need to know which you have to decide when to prune. While most guidelines call for February pruning towards the end of the month, use common sense too. We have had some late springs with winter weather before, and we didn’t get around to pruning until March. Late pruning is not going to kill a plant.
By mid-February, you can begin to plant the cool-season vegetables. English and snap peas are the coldest hardy, followed by greens, then the Cole crops: cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. Transplants should begin appearing in garden centers later this month. Greens, spinach, and carrots can be planted from seeds, and onion sets and transplants, along with seed potatoes, will appear at the end of the month. Cool gardening season is from February through mid-April. If you did an excellent job of covering any fall or late-planted vegetables, you should be harvesting them now. If you did not cover, you would probably need to replant.
Spring bulbs are beginning to make an appearance! Crocus and early daffodils have been blooming for years; we haven’t seen any signs yet, but it won’t be long. After that come hyacinths, tulips, and flowering onions. When you see flower buds emerging in your foliage, that is the time to put out some complete fertilizer to aid in the bud set for next year. Remember to keep the foliage happy and healthy for at least six weeks after bloom.
Plant of the Month – Ornamental Kales and Cabbages
Ornamental kales and cabbages (also known as “flowering” kales and cabbages) are in the same species as edible cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. While ornamental kales and cabbages are edible, they tend to have a bitter flavor, so they are often relegated to an ornamental in the garden. Technically, ornamental kales and cabbages are all kales (kales produce leaves in tight rosettes while cabbages produce heads). In the horticultural trade, ornamental kale is used for plants with deeply cut, curly, frilly, or ruffled leaves, while the broad flat-leaved types are typically called ornamental cabbage.
Ornamental cabbages and kales grow approximately one foot wide and 15 inches tall. In some parts of the state, the winter cold can take its toll, making the plants unattractive. But, in some parts, they can take a little hit but still growing strong. They can give us a lot of winter color in shades of pink, purple and white from fall through spring, depending on the winter weather. If they are doing well, they typically begin to stretch or get leggy as warm temperatures increase in the spring and then start to produce some straggly yellow blooms, which signal the end of their growing season (if Mother Nature didn’t end it sooner!).
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