Northwest Garden Checklist: Late Winter Planning, Planting, and Maintenance

Planning & Planting

• Bare-root stock (Zones 4–7, 17): Inexpensive, easy to plant. Nurseries offer fruits (apples, grapes, strawberries), perennial vegetables (asparagus), and ornamentals (roses, flowering trees, vines).
• Hardy perennials: Start aster, delphinium, hellebore, primrose, Shasta daisy, veronica, viola in coldframe/greenhouse. Transplant ~1 month before last frost.
• Order seeds from Northwest-adapted sources: Ed Hume Seeds, Garden City Seeds, Nichols Garden Nursery, Peters Seed & Research, Territorial Seed Co., West Coast Seeds. (Abundant Life Seeds' assets bought by Territorial after a fire.)
• Winter-blooming shrubs (Zones 4–7): Shop for Camellia sasanqua, sarcococca, Viburnum × bodnantense, wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox), witch hazels (Hamamelis).

Maintenance

• Houseplants: Rinse foliage under tepid water; feed flowering types with dilute liquid fertilizer.
• Feed asparagus & rhubarb: Spread 2-inch composted manure over dormant beds.
• Prune fruit trees: Above-freezing day. Remove dead/diseased/injured wood, then crossing/rubbing branches, then shape.
• Prune roses: Hybrid teas: keep 3–5 vigorous canes; remove diseased/injured. Landscape roses: shape. Rugosas: dig/transplant/discard suckers.
• Spray dormant oil: On leafless fruit trees and roses to smother overwintering eggs/larvae.