February | Growing for the Future

To Do List

As the days lengthen you could grow pea shoots and/or cress indoors in pots on a bright window sill (see September).
Order or buy the seeds for the crops you want to grow this season. Catalogues have great variety or buy from the local garden centre what you need.
Now is probably your last chance to buy bare rooted fruit trees for your garden. Potted trees can be sourced at any time of the year but are more expensive.
As in January, if you have established fruit trees and bushes now would be a good time to prune them.

You could be sowing or planting:

Seed potatoes

Start sprouting (chitting) seed potatoes. To ensure a crop of baby potatoes before the end of June, early varieties are best and will mature in about 10 weeks, e.g. Swift, Rocket, Desiree, Pentland Javelin, or Charlotte potatoes. Special seed potatoes can be ordered on-line or bought at most garden centres.

Curriculum Resources

February Key Stage 1
PDF - 4.6 MB

February Key Stage 2
PDF - 3.7 MB

SEN February Key Stage 1 Literacy
PDF - 880 KB

SEN February Key Stage 2 Literacy
DOC - 2.9 MB

SEN February Key Stage 1 Science
PDF - 1.4 MB

SEN February Key Stage 2 Science
DOC - 1.4 MB

How to chit potatoes

Chitting potatoes just means letting them develop sprouts so that the potatoes get a head start when they are put into the soil. If you don’t have time to chit your potatoes, don’t worry as they will grow anyway and will just take a little longer.

To chit potatoes, simply place them upright, with their ‘eyes’ up (the eyes are the bits you normally cut off when peeling potatoes) into a seed tray or use empty egg cartons. Place them in a light but not sunny, cool, frost free place, somewhere with a window or a porch. In about 4-6 weeks you should see short green shoots about 2-3cms long from the eyes of each tuber. Then they will be ready to plant in early April hopefully after the first frosts have gone (see April).