Hopefully you have already pruned your roses, and cleaned up all debris. Mulch the surrounding soil with compost. The cleaning you do this time of year will make a difference later in preventing disease. Adding organic amendments to the soil before you mulch will insure improvement of your soil, such as alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal, worm castings and fish emulsion. Hold off on any chemicals at this time except time release pellets. The chemicals will act too fast and your roses need a rest before they start growing again.

This is a good time of year to plant companion plants near your roses. Roses are less fussy about having their roots disturbed while dormant, and while they are pruned back, it’s easier to get around them. Perennials such as nepeta, penstemon, pelargoniums, artemesia, or stachys will grow tall enough to hide the ugly legs of a medium or tall rose. Ground hugging plants such as hardy geraniums, bacopa, lobelia, sweet alyssum, or some veronicas, look great around miniatures. I like to plant clematis next to my climbing roses because they love to intertwine and the impact can be fabulous. An important thing to remember when combining plants with roses is to consider the water needs and make sure they match. Mixing our native plants that don’t like water once established with roses could be a problem. One of them is going to not be at their best. Lavender is great at the edge of a rose garden, in an area where it won’t receive as much water. It can make a lovely hedge around your rose bed. Another thing to remember when combining plants is color. Some nice combinations are pink and white, red and white, red and yellow, blue and pink, blue and yellow, and purple and yellow. Putting shades of a single color can be lovely also.

The understatement of the year would be: it appears the rainy season has descended upon us. For gardeners, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that the soil salt build-up near the soil surface has been flushed deep into the sub terrain. The bad news is that nutrients went along with them. It is more important than ever to add organic materials into the top layer of the soil to help reestablish micro-colonies that were once living peacefully under our garden beds before what must have appeared to be a tsunami to them.

After all that rain, when the sun finally comes out, any true gardener can’t wait to get out and dig in the fresh soil. But remember that digging (or even walking) in waterlogged soil can compact it and make it difficult to grow anything. Wait until the soil crumbles in your hand when you pick it up before your spade goes near it! That being said, here is what you can start planting in February.

Camellias are still blooming and can be planted anytime. Look for clivia to put in difficult shade areas; it multiplies like crazy, puts on a spectacular show in the spring and comes in new colors from white to yellow to peach. Now is the time to plant gerbera daisies; be sure to plant them with their crowns above soil level. You can start putting in gladiola corms now and continue all spring for a succession of blooms. The following perennials can be planted now along the coast (inland, wait a few weeks until the threat of frost is past): gaura, felicia, salvia, erigeron, lavandula, erysimum, delphiniums, and foxgloves. Remember – crumbly soil!

This is also the time of year to cut back many shrubs and perennials that have been doing nothing all winter, but are now starting to show some signs of growth. Only cut back those that bloom in the summer or fall. If you cut back spring bloomers, (like lavender) you will be cutting off flower buds. When cutting back, a good rule of thumb is to cut back to the first basal growth. Never cut back to a stem where there is no sign of life. Some plants can take this, but unless you are sure, don’t take a chance. This is an opportunity to clean out dead, woody growth on plants like artemisia or penstemon that flop all over if left untouched.

Also cut back cane begonias, cannas, gingers and pyracanthas that only bloom once per stem. They should be sending up new growth now and cutting back the old will put their energy into the new flowers.

It is also time to cut back fuchsias by about two thirds and to fertilize them. They only bloom on new growth. Continue pinching for the next few months to keep them bushy.

Heavy rains of January were just what our soils needed to leech out salts and adjust pH. Now it is time to side dress vegetables with a balanced fertilizer to maintain that optimum growth. Weed veggie beds right away and replace mulch that may have been washed away. Snail and slug populations increase substantially in wet weather so traps, bait and hand picking are essential. Empty clay pots turned upside-down and propped slightly allow snails and slugs to take refuge inside where you can collect and dispose of them easily.

Begin working amendments into fallow soils to get them prepared for spring planting. If you just can’t wait for spring time, you can plant lettuces in February. Mesclun, or mixed varieties, do well in well-amended soils. Plant only 1/3 of a seed packet now, then the other two thirds in successive plantings, 2 to 3 weeks apart. You will enjoy a continuous crop through spring. Keep them evenly moist and protect emerging seeds from snails and slugs with barriers and your vigilance. Kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, carrots, parsnips can also be planted in the garden this month, and indoors you can begin starting seeds for summer vegetables.

Pruning of deciduous fruit trees needs to be completed now, followed by an application of well-balanced fertilizer. The varieties we grow in Orange County will bud, bloom and produce earlier than those in cold climates, so they will use those nutrients beginning in the next few weeks. Citrus and avocados should be fed now and as cane berries show signs of new growth, give them a balanced fertilizer too. Mix granular fertilizers gently into the mulch layer, or the top inch of barren soils, and then water all trees and berries immediately after fertilizing.