Soon we’ll be seeing spring’s blooms, but for now, our gardens are still wet and cold. Plants may look to be asleep but they’re preparing to put out new leaves and buds. Newly planted trees, perennials, vines and shrubs are establishing their roots. There’s a party going on in your garden!

Gardening and rain

Bouts of heavy rain are proving the climate change modelers’ accuracy. Stay out of the garden during storms and for several days after.

Wait two or three days at least after the last rain before you dig, weed or plant. While it’s much easier to work in wet, softened soil, doing so requires walking, standing and manipulating soil — all activities that damage soil and cause it to compact as it dries. Take the long-term perspective and just wait.

Protect slopes before rains start. To slow or stop erosion:

• Stretch straw- or compost-filled wattles across the slope, spaced 4 or 5 feet apart. Those wattles act as speed bumps to slow the flow and stem erosion.
• Cover the surface of the slope with rolls of jute netting, then cover it with coarse wood-based mulch (not redwood nuggets). The jute and mulch are both biodegradable, so they break down over time.
• Plant woody trees and shrubs. These plants’ roots grow deep and wide, to hold the hillside in place. Succulents, grasses and smaller groundcovers are good understory, but they don’t do the big job of stemming erosion and stabilizing slopes.

Wet conditions in the garden are ideal for fungi to spread. The more activity that happens in the garden, the more opportunity there is for those fungi to travel from plant to plant. Protect your plants by staying out of the garden when the soil and leaves are wet.

A few days after a big rain, walk through the garden to assess any damage. Check new plants to make sure soil hasn’t washed away from the roots of those that are newly installed. Fill gullies, check for erosion, note places that need to be filled or need drains installed or diverters placed.

Empty buckets, trash cans, dishes under potted plants, etc. If we get any warm days, standing water will become a mosquito breeding site.

Managing irrigation

• Between storms, leave the irrigation off unless we get a weekslong dry spell. Even then, days are cool, the soil is damp and the sun sits low in the sky, so plants don’t need much — if any — water.
• Check your irrigation controller for winter conditions so the automatic rain sensor shuts the system off when rain is expected or is falling.
• Before the heat and dry air of spring and summer, update your irrigation system to in-line drip, flexible tubing with emitters embedded inside those lines. These systems are most efficient, easiest to maintain, and they wet your garden beds evenly, just like rainfall.
• Keep dishes under pots empty. When pots stand in water, the soil becomes overly saturated, the roots rot and the plants die.
• Celebrate rainwater that fills bioswales and dry stream beds percolated into the soil. That “banked” water will support plants well into the warmer, drier months.

Low temperatures

• While most of our gardens don’t experience hard freezes (except in the mountains), we can get cold enough to damage plants. Download the map for your community’s average last frost date at bit.ly/ChillHoursSanDiego.
• Leave protective frost cloth covers in place until the end of the month.

• Don’t cut off cold-damaged leaves and stems just yet. They may look sad, but they protect the rest of the plant until the last chance of cold passes, typically around the end of the month along the coast, in early March inland and late March in the mountains.

Ornamentals

• This is a great time to plant the following:
  • Bare root roses, which are plentiful in the nurseries now.
  • “Wildflower” seeds. Be sure the mix specifies “Southern California wildflowers.” Most generic wildflower seed mixes are seeds native to other parts of the country. Some seeds are even invasive in our region.
  • Natives like coffeeberry (Frangula californica), California lilac (Ceanothus), mountain mahogany (Cerocarpus betuloides), bush sunflower (Encelia californica) and brittlebush, its desert cousin (Encelia farinosa).
  • Oaks including island oak (Quercus tomentella) native to the Channel Islands, and the majestic Engelmann oak (Quercus engelmannii), both suited to large properties. For smaller gardens, try Nuttal’s scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), which grows to a maximum of 10 feet tall and wide, or scrub oak (Quercus berberidifolia), which tops out at about 15 to 20 feet tall and wide. All oaks are very supportive of wildlife habitats for butterflies, birds, mammals and more.
  • Spring and summer drought-resilient, flowering perennials like kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos), South African daisy (Arctotis), Peruvian lily (Alstroemeria), sages (Salvia), red hot poker (Kniphofia) and more. All of these are native to Mediterranean climate regions of the world, where growing conditions are very similar to ours.
• Have inline drip irrigation in place before you plant anything new.
• As you drive through the county or hike on local trails, check out early spring blooming natives like manzanita (Arctostaphylos) and California lilac (Ceanothus). Want to know which ones they are? Check out the iNaturalist app for your phone. This is the best app for identifying plants in our gardens and in the wild.
• When planting natives, succulents and any other ornamental plants, do NOT amend the planting holes. You can throw a few handfuls of worm castings into the planting holes but nothing else.
• Always mulch after planting: rock mulch for succulents, chunky wood mulch for all other ornamental plants, straw in vegetable beds.
• Prune deciduous flowering shrubs, trees and perennials up until flower buds swell, but do NOT prune off flower buds. If you remove flower buds, the plants won’t flower or fruit this year.
• Prune and spray dormant in-ground and potted roses. There’s no reason to prune roses to the ground in our mild climate. The more healthy branches, the more flowers. Just remove the weak and diseased branches as well as those that point to the center or rub against others. Give the plant a nice shape, then stop pruning.
• Has your palm suddenly collapsed in the center? That’s the result of deadly, invasive South American palm weevils. By time the infection is obvious, the palm is in terminal decline. If you see or have an infected palm, report it to bit.ly/PalmWeevil. Have the palm removed.
• Do the roots of your Agave plants look like they’ve rotted, leaving a pool of foul-smelling liquid where the roots used to be? That’s a sure sign of Agave snout nose weevil. Dig those plants out immediately. Bag and seal all the plant parts in a plastic bag and trash — do not compost or greenwaste — those plants. Read about them here: bit.ly/AgaveWeevil.

Vegetable garden

• Plant the last round of cool weather crops: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, tatsoi and other “greens.” Harvest these crops by time the weather warms.
• To plant tiny seeds of carrots, turnips or radishes, make a mix of 1 part seeds with 5 or more parts coarse construction sand, then broadcast over the garden bed. Distributing seeds this way ensures that they’ll need minimal thinning once they sprout.
• Plant onion “sets” — young onion plants — and “seed” potatoes — small potatoes or small pieces of potato.
• Plant fava beans, pole beans and bush beans.
• If you planted a cover crop in your vegetable beds, cut it down at the end of February. Leave the roots in place. Stems and leaves go into compost or layer them onto your garden beds to decompose in place.
• Buy seeds for spring/summer vegetables, herbs and flowers. However, wait until March to plant them. Seeds started now will be stunted or killed by fungus long before the air and soil are warm enough to plant them outside.

Fruiting trees, shrubs, vines, perennials

And …

• Keep up with weeds. Hoe them, smother them with mulch, yank them out.
• Weeds are frustrating, but here’s what NOT TO USE to kill weeds: bleach, salt, saltwater, oil, gasoline, any kind of petroleum product, household disinfectant, Epsom salts. All of these products destroy your garden soil. Some are long-term toxins, too.

Want to start your own vegetables, flowers and herbs from seed? Sign up for the Easy Seed Starting Online Course at waterwisegardener.com. This online course runs March 1 to July 15. Learn how to be a successful seed starter.

For even more fun, sign up for one of three in-person Easy Seed Starting Workshops across the region in March. All workshop participants get access to the online course as well.

Unsure whether these are for you? Attend my Easy Seed Starting Intro Webinar at 7 p.m. on Feb. 15. Sign up at bit.ly/EasySeedIntroWebinar2024.

Sterman is a garden designer, journalist and the host of “A Growing Passion” on public television. She runs Nan Sterman’s Garden School at waterwisegardener.com.