Leap Year Day! 65 Degrees in February

Looking forward to May (April?) Tulips!

Leap Year Day 2016

It is not very often we see a day like today in March let alone February. However, Mother Nature gave us a huge gift today in New Hampshire with a 60+ degree day.

The Crocus are up and after yesterday Tulips too!

When we do happen to get warm days early in the season in our zone 5ish/6ish growing area, I am generally conservative about what I do in the garden. So even after a winter as balmy as ours this year and as it usually does in the shoulder seasons, my gardening To Do List on this February Day can be divided into 3 categories: "Without Hesitation",  "With Much Hemming and Hawing", and "Better Not".  Actually, I would add one for this day - the "I Can't Believe I'm Doing This in February" category.

The major task I undertook today "Without Hesitation" was to cut back hardy perennials that I had never gotten to in the fall.  This included Mums, Sedum, Coneflower, Bee Balm, Catmint, Iris and Daylilys.   I also chopped back a few of my Spireas and would have done more had I not been forced in by the rain.   In many cases I just left the debris on the ground near the plant.  I am still fairly certain we have freezing temps in our future and the debris adds a good deal of insulation.

Mums have shown green all Winter!  Here they are all nicely cut back - Daffs in the background!

In the "With Much Hemming and Hawing" category fell cutting back my ornamental grasses and pruning some of my Butterfly Bushes and Sage.   The reason this category exists at all is because if I leave everything that needs to be done until the time that it can fit into the "Without Hesitation" category we are full steam ahead at The Meandering Path and there is a good chance it won't get done at all! This wouldn't be an issue with Butterfly Bush as I can cut it way into the early season and if I don't get to it I'm just left with a really big bush.  However, once the grasses begin to come up trying to make them presentable is difficult.  I completed my "Hemming and Hawing" chores for  the warmer parts of my yard and left those things that are in lower zones for later (hopefully!).  Today I also hemmed and hawed about taking away debris from the garden beds and again, I only did it in the warmest sections of the yard - those in front of the house that are south facing.  I am fairly sure I will be out there again raking as leaf litter gets blown around over the next month or so but  I was so happy to see one bed cutback, cleaned, edged.

One bed cleaned and edged!

As hinted to above, in my "Better Not" category was cutting Butterfly Bushes and my woody perennials like Sage and Lavendar - those I will cut back by 1/3 when I am quite certain the growing season has arrived.  I decided not to prune my Boxwood as the winter sun and lack of snow insulation has already done a great deal of damage.  I also decided not to remove leaf litter from around most of my plants.  Those items I will save and hope that I can get it all done in a couple more weeks.  As an aside, I never touch my Roses until late in March - in fact, even in March they end up in the hemming and hawing category.   Our fall season in the garden has been getting longer and longer over the last 15 years but our spring season tends to go later and later.  Roses I always think of as a warm weather plant.

In the "I Can't Believe I Am Doing This In February Category", well, beside the fact that I was actually gardening in February - was the fact that I took a piece of an Annabelle Hydrangea and moved it, decided to go ahead and edge out a garden bed and the fact that I could weed today.   All this I could do because the ground is not frozen.  Actually, if it was a mid-March I would say the ground was workable and head out to make some money.  Given that February is not yet over, I'm gonna give it a couple days (weeks?).   In most places, today, I found the ground to be workable - not something I ever remember seeing in February.

I can't believe I moved this Annabelle in February