February Garden Jobs for the Vegetable Garden
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Spring is nearly here, and it can be overwhelming knowing how to prepare the garden. Use this list of February garden jobs as a checklist to stay organised and inspired. It includes seeds to sow, crops to harvest, winter garden ideas, and projects for the vegetable garden.
In some places in the northern hemisphere, February can be a wintry scene indeed. In others, it’s warm enough to start planting outdoors. As I look out the window at my zone 8b garden, it’s somewhere in between. Rain is steadily coming down, but the light is returning, and green shoots and perennial vegetables are starting to grow. This is the last month before it feels like spring is upon us.
Each year, about this time, I scramble to get myself organized. Do I have the seeds I need? Which ones should I sow first? Are my grow lights working? How’s the temperature in the greenhouse? If you’re anything like me, then this month is both exciting and a little overwhelming. That’s why I’ve created this comprehensive list of February Garden Jobs.
It includes ideas for getting a head start on this year’s vegetable garden. That includes tips and tasks for indoor jobs that help you zoom ahead with growing plants, no matter the weather outside. You’ll also find tips for sowing the first seeds, preparing garden beds, and planting bare-root plants. I refer back to it each year and hope it will help keep you on track with your garden, too.
February Garden Jobs Checklist
Seeds to Sow in February
Even though February can be a cold month, you can sow many seeds both undercover and outdoors. If the ground isn’t frozen, now is the time to plant shallot sets, broad beans, and garlic directly in the soil. Each benefits from a cold spell, and hard-neck garlic won’t even form bulbs without several weeks of near-freezing temperatures.
Though many gardeners plant garlic in autumn, you still have time to get bulbs in now. If you don’t have cold temperatures forecast, pop your garlic in the refrigerator for two or three weeks before planting it out next month. Otherwise, plant soft-neck garlic varieties.
Seeds that you can sow now undercover include winter salad leaves, sprouting broccoli, leeks, spinach, kohlrabi, peas, and onions. Undercover can mean in an unheated greenhouse, but also on a bright windowsill indoors. Each germinates at relatively low temperatures (above 45°F/7°C) but, at lower temperatures, can take a long time to sprout. To encourage speedier germination, sow these seeds into trays or modules kept at around 65-70°F (18-21°C).
Heat-loving Seeds to Sow in February
If your winters are long and cold, growing seeds undercover will give you a head start on tender plants. Propagators and grow lights can help get your seeds started early by providing extra warmth and light when both are in short supply. You then continue to grow the plants under cover for a few weeks, then harden them off and plant them out after your region’s last frost in spring.
Seeds you can sow undercover in February with heat include tomato, pepper, eggplant, globe artichoke, and chillies. These heat-loving seeds need warmth (60-86°F (16-30°C) to germinate, so they may need a heated propagator, heat pad, or a bright windowsill above a radiator.
Chillies are incredibly popular to sow in February and are easy to grow, too. With so many varieties, you cannot fail to spice up your recipes with your homegrown harvest. Before you purchase seeds, check the variety against the Scoville scale to check how spicy it is. Popular types include ‘Habañero’ and ‘Jalapeño’ or, for milder palettes, ‘Anaheim’ or ‘Alam Paprika.’
Order and Chit Potatoes
February is a great time to order and chit seed potatoes. There are hundreds of potato varieties, but the ones we tend to grow fall into categories based on cooking type and harvest time. Early potatoes, called first earlies in Britain, generally take around 55-70 days from planting to harvest. Mid-season potatoes, also called second earlies, take 70-90 days, while late-season (maincrop potatoes) take 90-110 days to harvest.
Though many people grow potatoes from the supermarket, it’s best to order good-quality, disease-free tubers (seed potatoes) from commercial growers. Starting from healthy stock helps avoid introducing diseases into your growing space.  If your region is prone to late blight, you might also want to consider blight-resistant varieties or grow only early potatoes to prevent losing your crop.
Though February is too early to plant potatoes in most regions, you can still chit seed potatoes. Chitting means encouraging seed potatoes to sprout before planting, and it can help the plants grow faster. It doesn’t really speed up the time to harvest late (maincrop) potatoes, but it does with earlier varieties.
To chit, lay the seed potatoes in a single layer on a tray in a place with cool, indirect light. A windowsill or greenhouse is ideal. Place the tuber end with the most eyes upright, and in a few weeks, ‘eyes’ or ‘chits’ will develop. Ideally, you want two to three vigorous, short shoots per seed potato before planting them out later in spring.
Organize Seeds and Seed Packets
February is a perfect time to organize your seeds. We can all be guilty of hoarding a drawer of random seeds, so look through your stock and check the use-by dates. Most will have a good percentage that germinate after this date, but the longer the time that has elapsed, the fewer seeds will sprout.
It is useful to categorize your seeds to find them quickly and not miss the planting window to get them in the ground. There are plenty of ways to go about it, but I’ve recently started keeping my seeds in this storage case and love how simple it is to use.
There are many ways to organize seeds, though. You can group them by sowing month, by seed type (e.g., tomatoes, legumes, herbs), or alphabetically—whatever works best for you. Organizing your seeds will help you achieve sowing and growing success and ensure you don’t forget to sow them.
Another thing to consider when organizing seeds is being realistic about how much you can actually grow. You may find you have spares to give away to a local allotment or gardening club, and that’s a great way to get seeds used before their viability drops.
You can also swap them against seeds you genuinely want and will use this year. Seed swaps are a great way to increase the varieties you grow and share with fellow gardeners. When in-person events aren’t possible, you could also attend a virtual seed swap. If there aren’t any events in the area, you can also organize your own seed swap.
February Garden Jobs
February is a great time to organize for the season ahead and start with a clean slate. Begin by deep cleaning the greenhouse, pots, cloches, and labels. Check your toolkit and repair, service, or replace broken tools. Also, take time to sit down with a pad and pen and draw up your garden plan for this year. It will help you use your space more efficiently and decide where to grow what. Make sure to rotate your crops to reduce pest and disease buildup and prevent nutrient depletion.
February is a great time to clear away dead foliage, fallen leaves, broken pots, and rubbish. You could also use this time to turn the compost heap and add any garden waste to the top. Other jobs include laying black plastic on beds to warm up the soil for early sowings and finishing winter pruning. Prune autumn raspberries down to the ground to make way for new shoots. You can also prune apple and pear trees, thornless blackberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, and redcurrants to maintain a productive framework.
Bare-root strawberry plants also tend to arrive in late winter, and you can plant them directly in the garden. If you still need to clean your strawberry bed, you can also plant them into pots to grow on in the greenhouse for now. When I do this, I plant the strawberry plants in the garden in April.
What to Harvest in February
There are plenty of hardy edibles that you can harvest in February. Winter-hardy edibles like rosemary, parsnips, and Taunton Deane kale flourish. Also, leeks, very early purple sprouting broccoli, kale, and the first of the forced rhubarb – look out for Timperley Early since it’s one of the earliest cropping rhubarb varieties.
In places with winters that don’t dip much below freezing, root vegetables such as carrots, oca, celeriac, and beetroot can be stored in the ground until needed. In some cases, the above-ground foliage will die, but the root will remain tasty below ground. I also leave mature beetroot in the soil through early spring to produce an early crop of beet greens.
Planning for Next Year’s Winter Vegetables
Perennial vegetables are a great choice as they only need to be planted once for years of harvests. They are reliable and require less work, and some of them will be ready to harvest in February in milder climates. That includes perennial kale and the first of the garlic chive greens. If you’re into wild food foraging and they grow in your area, you can also harvest the first leaves of wild ramps and wild garlic.
Growing winter vegetables needs planning, and you sow many plants in late spring or early summer to produce a winter crop. Set aside space since these plants will be in the ground for months. Decide what you are going to grow, where you are going to grow it, and prepare the soil.
Mulching Jobs for February
February is the ideal month to get on top of weeds. By removing weeds now, you can slow down the annual invasion of unwanted seedlings before they go to seed and spread. Make sure you dig up the roots, but be careful to avoid emerging bulbs.
While you’re at it, mulch perennials with a generous covering of well-rotted organic matter. Two to three inches of garden compost or aged manure will provide nutrition and warmth, reduce weeds, and improve soil structure.
Another useful February garden job is to create a seedbed. A seedbed is a small area you have set aside in your garden dedicated to raising young plants before they are large enough to transplant to their final home in the veg patch. Seedbeds allow you to maximize productivity in your main beds, giving mature plants more time to crop while young plants have space to mature. Creating a seedbed couldn’t be easier. Remove all weeds and large stones from an area, rake the soil to a fine tilth, and add a thick layer of sterile compost. You sow seeds directly into the compost.
Sowing other Seeds in February
Seed packets generally list sowing times, but please remember that the same packet of seeds can end up in the hands of people with wildly varying winter and spring temperatures. The information on the back is general, and if you’re planning to sow seeds in February, the safest thing to do is to follow sowing times for vegetables for your specific gardening zone.
You can also work out sowing times manually by finding your area’s last frost date and counting back the time needed for seeds to germinate and for the seedlings to mature enough before planting out. Doing this ensures that the worst of the weather will have passed by the time your seedlings are large enough to plant outside.
Garden Jobs for March
As February comes to a close, some of our tasks will neatly lead into March garden jobs. We’ll continue to sow seeds in heated propagators or direct sowing under cloches, clean up overgrown strawberry beds, sow hardy veg like spinach, and plant more onion and shallot sets.
Weeding of newly sprouted weeds begins in March, too. It’s also a great time to think about creating a pond for wildlife and establishing an asparagus bed. Hopefully, you are all fired up for the season ahead, and to keep you busy, here is even more seasonal inspiration for the vegetable garden: