February
in Grants Pass is when the garden and the gardener really start to wake up. January has its snowdrops, but we don’t
really care; it is too cold and dreary to draw us outside. In February, sunny days get warm enough to
make cold weather gear too warm by afternoon, and coax crocuses and daffodils
to bloom.
Daffodils in oak leaf mulch for weed control.
February is the time to kill annual springweeds like bitter cress, heron’s bill, groundsel, foxtail and cheat before they
bloom and spread; it has been since October, when they started to grow and some
started to bloom. Cut any annual weed
under the crown and it will be gone; you can clear a lot of them quickly with
gardening scissors or a knife.
Winter is also time to cut and dig
rampant perennials like violets that are in stasis until this month, when they
will start to bloom in earnest, set seed and make the matter more urgent. Cut blackberries back and dig out their crowns. Dig excess raspberries, transplant them, and
prune out dead canes. You still have
time to transplant trees, shrubs and perennials while roots grow before spring
top growth begins. Winter is the best time
to do heavy tree pruning with a saw, but lopper work is better done in
midsummer. "Crown" your roses when their buds start to grow, cutting them to the hard crown at the base to stop black spot until fall.
It is also time to start new gardening beds with compost, edging the beds with 6-12” boulders, choosing rocks
with flat bottoms from the pile at Copeland.
Leaves can be used in the fall, several inches to a foot thick. But new beds can be started at any time of
year with compost. One can build compost
beds in the heat of summer for summer vegetables and fall perennials, or in the
depths of winter for winter and spring planting. Two inches is good for ornamentals, but six
inches will give them a better start and grow great vegetables.
Compost needs to be covered with coarse
mulch like walk-on fir or nugget bark to protect it, roots and seedlings from
rain, wind, and drying sun. Avoid using fine
bark, which kills soil with its natural preservatives.
Blueberries and azaleas don’t even
like to be planted into plain soil; they do better set on top of the ground and
surrounded by compost covering their roots; their fine, spongy roots
will sink into the soil as the compost is worked in by worms. The more general rule is that #1 pots and
larger need to be planted in soil, or they will be left high and dry as the
compost is worked in and rots, while 4” and smaller pots will sink into soil with
the compost.
Paths
need to be controlled too. Two inches of
wood chips, walk-on fir or ¾ inch nugget bark, will stop most weeds for a
season, but need to be refreshed yearly.
4 x 8 sand, ¼-1/8 inch sifted river sand available at Copeland, laid one
inch deep, covers mud and makes it easy to hula-hoe and rake young weeds as the
sand brings them up. (It also is good for
starting a lawn and covering its mud.)
It is also easy to clean 4 x 8 sand by blowing and raking the tree trash
into the beds for mulch. Some trees,
like mimosa, demand it, as they drop sticky flowers half the summer, leaves in
the fall, and seed pods all winter, none of which are easy to clean off bark or
chips.
Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener 541-955-9040 rycke@gardener.com
