Is February Too Early To Sow Veg Seeds?
Some gardeners might warn against sowing seeds until later in the year when it’s much lighter outside but February is the perfect time to start sowing tomatoes, chilli peppers and leafy salad seeds and, in some cases, particularly for aubergines (eggplant) and sweet peppers, February might even be a little bit on the late side.
In this article, I’ll list seeds that you can sow in February if you are after that early harvest and, with a bit of luck*, maybe you won’t need to eat any more store-bought tomatoes by as soon as the end of June.
*Okay, maybe a lot of luck. Let me explain…
February Is The Ideal Time To Sow Tomato Seeds
Tomatoes need a longer growing season in the UK than in more reliably-warm and sunny parts of the world. However it can be a fine balancing act as our later last frosts and high latitude mean that the risk of plants going leggy before they can be planted out is much higher than for Mediterranean or US-based growers. For very early sowings, one way of overcoming this problem is by using grow lights but if you sow in the middle of February, a south facing windowsill should be all it takes to stop plants from going leggy and to get that all-important, early harvest.
Valentine’s day is also meant to be the traditional day for sowing tomato seeds in Italy — and who am I to argue with that!?
If you can commit to rotating your plants once a day so that they don’t bend too far in any one direction and if you can also give your plants a longer hardening-off period to give them more light during the day (or even use a plastic greenhouse to give them diffuse light and more heat), then you have no need to fear that your plants won’t be viable when it’s time to plant them out which, for me, is usually in mid-May.
I’ve started tomatoes in Jan, Feb and March and my biggest ever harvest and the earliest tomatoes I’ve picked came from a 15th of February sowing, with the very first Sungold cherry tomato picked on the last day of June. It was a very good year…
Of course, if you want to start your tomato plants super early or simply want to give them the best possible conditions, then you could also consider using grow lights to provide the necessary light. In a recent article, I tested some cheap grow lights bought online to see if they are bright enough to grow tomato seedlings without them going leggy. If you are using different grow lights, then you can use the same method to determine if they are powerful enough to support tomato seedlings while it’s still dark outside.
Read these instructions on the best way of sowing tomato seeds or follow the seed sowing steps for aubergines & peppers below.
When to Sow Aubergine, Eggplant and Pepper Seeds
Aubergines and peppers, particularly sweet or bell peppers, need an even longer time to grow in the UK. As such, I usually recommend that you sow these plants towards the end of January. However I have had great success sowing high-yielding aubergine varieties like Moneymaker in the third week of February.
The trick is provide a lot of heat by placing them in a suntrap on or near concrete so that they experience higher temperatures during the day and night than they might out in a garden bed. While the same trick will work with peppers, usually this is unnecessary – but you still do need to get your boots on and sow your pepper seeds as early in the month as you can, otherwise you may find yourself harvesting some very green peppers in November.
Sowing aubergine and pepper seeds is relatively straight forward. Find a free-draining seed starting mix or a potting mix that isn’t too rich and use it to fill your favourite container. I use propagator trays which come with perfectly sized lids to help keep humidity higher and the soil mixture moist.
Make a small hole into the soil surface, no deeper than your fingernail, and place the seeds in the hole. Then cover the seeds with more mix and water your containers by bottom-watering so that the seed isn’t disturbed. Then seal your container with some kind of lid or humidity dome or wrap it in cling film – anything to keep the humidity in while the seeds germinate.
Place your container in a warm spot such as in an airing-cupboard or on a windowsill above a radiator to help speed up germination, which will take around a week or two depending on conditions. As soon as you see any sign of germination, remove the cover and place the seedlings by a bright, sunny windowsill so that they don’t go leggy. And, as with the tomatoes, consider adding grow lights if you’re short on south-facing windows.
Is February Too Late To Sow Onion Seeds?
Boxing Day is the traditional day to start sowing onion seeds in the UK but for a later harvest, a batch sown in February is still completely viable. It is, however, a less popular time to sow seeds as in a couple of months you could simply buy and plant onion sets. However growing onions from seed is much cheaper (and much more fun!), you just need to be a little more gentle with the young seedlings – if there is one plant where you don’t want to damage the roots during transplant, it’s this one!
You can sow onion seeds in trays or modules by pressing them into the surface of a well-draining potting mix. I find that one or two seeds per cell is more than enough as germination is pretty good and we really don’t want to separate seedlings and risk damage the roots as that signals to the plant that is should stop growing. You could even sow directly into a larger pot to avoid potting-on altogether!
If your onions are going to share a container then you’ll want to thin out the weakest seedling as early as you possibly can to minimise root disturbance and then you’ll want to let them grow until the frosts are only very very light before planting out, at which point you should have more-or-less grown your own onion sets that can be planted out in the spring.
Can I Still Plant Garlic In February?
If you spend too long on social media, you might think that the autumn is the only time to plant garlic as they need a prolonged period of cold (frosty) weather to help them form cloves rather than one giant bulb. But you can plant garlic in February as there’s still plenty of time until the last frosts in May and I find that March is typically the coldest month. This February in particular looks to be a very warm one which means that the soil isn’t going to be frozen and too hard to plant your garlic cloves into either, so I’ll be planting another batch this month.
You can buy cloves online or down the garden centre which is a better option for your garden than using supermarket garlic as the seed cloves are known to be disease free.
I use a dibber to make a two-inch hole and then I place the garlic in the hole, pointy-end up, so that the tip is about an inch below the soil surface and space my garlic cloves about six inches apart. And then I simply cover with more soil and wait until the summer for a glorious garlic harvest which will keep extremely well and you’ll be supplied with home-grown until well into the Winter.
What Salad Leaves Can I Sow In February?
In February you can also sow hardy salad leaves like spinach and Swiss chard which can survive a light frost. And you can start sowing your lettuce varieties too! This way you’ll have plants ready to plant out when the weather begins to warm up a little.
If you’re going to sow salad leaves now, I recommend you sow indoors or start them undercover in something like a greenhouse or a cold-frame and keep an eye on the temperatures. If it starts to look like a very hard freeze is coming, it might be worth bringing the young seedlings indoors overnight and returning them to their shelter during the daytime.
But if you sow salad seeds now then they’ll be some of the first plants that you’ll be able to plant out in the Spring and, as far as I’m concerned, sowing seeds in February is the easiest way of getting the earliest harvest of annual home-grown veg.
As always, Happy Gardening!
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