February in the Garden

If you’re not lucky enough to be living somewhere tropical, mid-winter has you in its grasp and you may be wondering what you can be doing in February in the garden. Although there’s not much to do outside, there are several activities you can work on inside to get you ready for a new growing season.  Suggestions from Joanne and Matt in this episode: Take care of your Christmas houseplants. Set up grow lights for starting seeds. Check out seed catalogues for interesting veggies or perennials to grow. Order seeds from catalogues or from online plant sources. Grow sprouts for salad. Take an online gardening class. Book tickets for a local garden show. Attend a local Seedy Saturday. Force spring bulbs. Force spring branches like pussy willow or forsythia. Resources mentioned during the show How to Grow Amaryllis Growing Under Lights Down the Garden Path Podcast Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for 17 years. A horticulturist, college educator and landscape designer, Matthew Dressing owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, they do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In their new book, Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and Matthew distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. You can find it on Amazon.