Spraying time is here in the February southern garden. Use liquid fungicide, and go over the whole garden, being sure to spray undersides of the leaves. This is health insurance that pays big dividends. Do not spray if the temperature is below 50 degrees. Sunshine, no wind and not too low a temperature are right.
Order your roses right away. Stocks can sometimes be short and prices are high, but even so we all want roses of the finest kinds. Include Hybrid Teas in your selection and also the fine old Teas Madame Lombard and Duchesse de Brabant, the Hybrid Perpetuals General Jacqueminot and Georg Arends, the Bourbon Malmaison, the China Louis Phillippe and, for real attar of roses aroma, the Damascenas. These give flowers almost every month in the year and need little pruning or spraying.
Berried plants for winter color add much to the beauty of these months both indoors and out. So let your plant orders include the scarlet fruited Pyracantha formosana (now called P. koidzumi) and the larger and taller P. gibbsi yuannensis (now called P. crenatoserrata).
The homes are priceless. The cassino holly, Ilex cassine angustifoliti, is the most prolific, together with the low growing Burford Holly, I. cornuta burfordi. The regular I. cornuta is taller with spiny foliage and with the largest berries of all, but it’s not very prolific. It grows tall like the hybrid I. opaca howardi and the Christmas berry or Yaupon holly, the ruby fruited L vomitoria.
The heavenly bamboo, Nandina domestics, with heavy pendant clusters of shining scarlet fruit, is one of the favorites of our gardens. The berries last from fall to spring and are a continuous delight.
With camellias in beautiful luxuriance, pansies along the edges of the borders, sweetshrubs scenting the air, a few early narcissus coming on together with delicate old Roman hyacinths in blue and white – even in February there are flowers down here. Do you wonder that the highways are crowded with visitors from colder and bleaker climes?
The recently asked questions and their answers on topic like those below at plant-care.com: