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February Garden Calendar Here Comes the Rain!
While January is the heart of winter, the February garden calendar is the shortest month of the year, and is one of the most jammed packed for people concerned with their gardening. February's rainfall pattern, for most of California, is heavy – about 17% of the rainfall in a given year lands during this short month.
The February garden calendar starts out with the usual gamut of tasks related to dormancy; bare root planting and pruning while the plants are dormant should be finished this month (and should have been started last month).
Early February is where the biggest risks of frost lie, with the risk decreasing as the month progresses.
To reduce the risk of frost damage, be sure to water the ground around the plants that are at risk, and cover them to make sure that everything is safe and sound.
It may be worthwhile to put some warming pots (clay pots with heated stones) out if you can cover the plants to trap the heat.
Finish Pruning – There's Still Time!
The best time of the year to prune your plants is when they're dormant for the winter, and if you didn't get to it in
January,
then the February garden calendar is the time to prune your plants to open out the cores, clear away dead branches, or make sure that the fruit bearing wood is exposed for easy harvesting. This is also the time to use fixed copper sprays to kill off fungi and over-wintering insect eggs.
This is also a good time of the year to haunt your local nursery and pick up some good bargains on bare root plantings to augment your landscape design.
Be sure to aerate the soil before planting, and tamp it down afterwards, to give a firm base.
You'll want to do this while the plants are dormant to make the transition easier.
Weed Prevention And Fertilizing
At the end of the February garden calender, just before the weather turns, is the first time to seriously start fertilizing your plant areas. If you had problems with crabgrass and spotted spurge in the past, pick up fertilizers with emergence herbicides, which are weed preventer's.
Crabgrass is opportunistic and begins to pollinate towards the end of February and at the beginning of March; even though you won't see it until the height of summer, prevention now saves you weeding time later. Two recommended emergence herbicides are Pendamethalin and Dacthal. They can protect against crabgrass and several types of broad leaf weeds.
Bulb Planting And Planning Ahead
The best part of the late February garden calendar is that it's when you plant your bulbs for the mid spring and summer season; most everything you plant now will start to bloom in 8 to 10 weeks, and it's time to start scheduling biweekly bulb planting to make sure you have your blooms in rotation.
Keep in mind that this time of year, you generally get an extra hour of daylight in the mornings and evenings when scheduling things, and to look to the needs of specific plants.
Some plants may need treatment now (such as aluminum sulfate for Hydangeas to make them blue in the summer), while they're dormant.
The February garden calendar is the time to plant bulbs, and you'll want to follow sensible, common place guides – keep them six inches deep and six inches apart, so that you can stagger plant on subsequent weeks and so the plants don't interfere with each other.
For edibles, this is the time of the year to plant crowns of strawberries and rhubarb.
A very few plants start to bloom in the February garden calender, one of the most notable being the Coral Pea, which can be trained as a vine or cultivated and pruned as a mound shrub. Other early bloomers are Carolina Jessamine, and Pink Jasmine. Others are flowering quince, India Hawthorne and the California Lilac. Flowering trees include Bailey Acacia and Saucer Magnolia. The Bailey Acacia prefers a well drained soil and plenty of sunlight (it's originally native to Australia) and Saucer Magnolia prefers things a bit more moist.
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This is also a good time of the year to haunt your local nursery and pick up some good bargains on bare root plantings to augment your landscape design. 
Keep in mind that this time of year, you generally get an extra hour of daylight in the mornings and evenings when scheduling things, and to look to the needs of specific plants. 
