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Allotment and vegetable gardening month by month guide: January - March

Once you have decided to set up your garden or allotment site, what do you do now? This guide will show you what to do with your garden month by month. What to sow, what to look for, what to avoid etc.

 

JANUARY

January, like December, is usually a month of hard frosts although with global warming changing our climate, this prediction is hardly firm.

Harvest:

Leeks may well be standing ready but if a long freeze seems likely you can dig some up and heel them in to dug ground for easy access – unless we have deep snow!

Parsnips and swedes in the ground can come up when you are ready, cover with fleece or straw to stop them freezing solid into the ground.

The cabbage family should be providing some sustenance and beet leaves (perpetual spinach) and chards will be available.

On a sunny day it is worth emptying your potato sacks and check for any that are starting to rot before it spreads.

General Jobs in the Garden:

In an ideal world you will have finished digging over, creating leafmould heaps etc as suggested for December. If like me you are always behind, try to catch up! Digging over now if we have a fine day will also have the benefit of exposing pests in the soil which will be eaten by friendly birds such as the robin.

Keep the plot tidy and check tree stakes remain firm, greenhouses are secure etc. against winter storms.

As you harvest brassicas, dig up the stems and turn the ground over. Because the compost heap will be cold and slow at this time of year, you can always bury these in the bottom of a trench along with some kitchen waste to prepare for the runner beans later in the year.

Sowing, Planting and Cultivating:

January is not the month for outdoor planting although you may be able to make use of your greenhouse, especially if you can keep the house frost free. Unless you have specialist equipment it's always a gamble in deep winter, for who knows how cold it may get?

Fruit:

Resist the temptation to try out new secateurs on stone fruits like cherry and damson, although you can still prune apples and pears etc.

Remove any mummified fruits hanging or on the ground under the trees as these will be harbouring pests.

Seed Order:

Since the weather will be keeping you indoors, now is a good opportunity to sit down with the seed catalogues or browse the seed merchant's web sites and decide what to try this year.
Although you probably have your favourite varieties, it may be an opportunity to try some new varieties and compare the performance.

Click here for a list of UK seed suppliers. Thompson & Morgan also supply Canada, the USA and most of the world.

 

FEBRUARY

February is often the coldest winter month although spring is just around the corner. More than any other month, what to do in February will depend on your local conditions. It's usually better to hold off than try to sow in cold waterlogged ground that will rot seeds rather than germinate them.

Harvest:

Leeks may well be standing ready but if a long freeze seems likely you can dig some up and heel them in to dug ground for easy access – unless we have deep snow!
Parsnips, turnips and swedes in the ground can come up when you are ready, cover with fleece or straw to stop them freezing solid into the ground.

The cabbage family should be providing some sustenance with early purple sprouting, kale and Brussels sprouts being available. Beet leaves (perpetual spinach) and chards will be available.

Other crops you may have: salsify, scorzonera, chicory, endive, celeriac, celery and Jerusalem artichokes.

General Jobs in the Garden:

If you have finished all the major tasks, such as digging over, creating leafmould heaps etc you will not have a lot to do in February but if like most of us you are scrambling to keep up, this is your last chance before spring.

Double check the greenhouse, ensure the glass is firmly secured and replace any cracked panes etc. If you've not managed to give it a thorough clean, now is the time before it is pressed into service.

Check last year's potato bed for any volunteers (left over small potatoes) and remove them to avoid passing on disease problems and blight.

You're going to be using your pots and seed trays next, so this is a good opportunity to wash out and sterilise them so you seedlings will get off to the best possible start.
This years potato bed will benefit from a good application of compost or rotted manure that can be forked in or rotovated in to get them away.

You can cover soil with dark plastic sheeting, fleece or cloches to warm it up for a couple of weeks before you start to sow and plant.

Sowing, Planting and Cultivating:

As stated above, what you sow outdoors will depend on local conditions. If suitable you can sow your broad beans in February along with early peas such as Feltham First and Meteor for a May / June harvest.

Conventional advice is to sow parsnips now but I believe their reputation for poor germination is due to being placed in cold wet soil and I have had much better germination by sowing in March.

Jerusalem artichokes and shallots can be planted now, although shallots will benefit from covering with a cloche.

Under Cover:

If you have a greenhouse, you can get an early crop of lettuce, rocket and radish away in there. You can utilise cloches outdoors but success will be more dependent on the weather.

Time to sow your summer cabbages such as Greyhound and Primo, as well as turnips and spinach.

Onions from seed should be started now. They need about 15 degrees to get them going so you may be best using the windowsill in a cool room to start them off.

With a heated propagator or using windowsills you can start off aubergine and peppers. Once again, I have found better results by waiting until March, which I put down to day length but many people feel this is the right time.

Chitting Potatoes:

There has been talk about whether it is necessary to chit potatoes but it is too early to plant them and if left in their bags, seed potatoes will produce long sprouts that will break off at planting time anyway.

Chitting is simply placing the potatoes in a frost free place with indirect light and will produce short strong shoots, getting them away to a faster start. You can use egg cartons or seed trays to keep them in. Don't forget to label them so you don't get confused as to variety come planting time.

I read that spraying with seaweed solution at fortnightly intervals while chitting will improve the crop but I didn't notice any benefit myself.

With main crop potatoes, I reduce the number of shoots to three, or four on larger seed potatoes, so that they produce larger potatoes rather than masses of smaller ones.

Fruit - Planting & Pruning :

There is still time to finish planting fruit trees and bushes, especially raspberries and other cane fruits.

Early this month you can prune apple and pear trees while they are still dormant. It's also time to prune gooseberries and currants. With currants shorten the sideshoots to just one bud and remove old stems from the centre of the bushes.

Protection & Forcing:

If you are in a sheltered area and grow early flowering fruit trees like nectarines, peaches and apricots, protect the flowers with horticultural fleece against frost. You can also use old net curtains for this job.

Forcing Rhubarb:

Rhubarb can be forced for an early crop of the sweetest stalks. Just cover a crown or two with buckets or even an upturned large pot and insulate the outside with straw or compost for added heat. The stalks will grow in the dark.

The drawback is that this takes a lot out of the crown and it won't recover for a couple of years. The professional growers in the famous Rhubarb Triangle dig up their crowns and take them into huge dark warm sheds to produce forced rhubarb. Once the season ends these exhausted crowns are discarded as it will take them longer to recover than to grow new crowns.

 

MARCH

March is the month when things really start to move in the growing season, in fact the start of the year used to be The Feast of the Annunciation, 25 th March until 1752 in Britain when we adopted the Gregorian calendar and started our year on the 1 st January.

Harvest:

Any leeks left standing should come up now – you can freeze them for use in soups and stews.
Parsnips too should come up in early March before they try and re-grow.

You may have spinach beet and chards available, the last of the late Brussels sprouts, winter cauliflowers, kale, swedes, salsify and scorzonera. Don't forget to keep checking the purple sprouting!

General Jobs in the Garden:

Have a good tidy up and finish those odd construction jobs because you are going to be busier still later in the year.

If you have any horticultural fleece, you can peg that onto the ground a week or so before you plant. The small rise in temperature of the soil can make a big difference

Sowing, Planting and Cultivating:

If the weather permits you can plant your onion and shallot sets. March is usually the right time to establish an asparagus bed if you are starting from crowns. Mid March should let you start planting those early potatoes you've had chitting and talking of root crops, you can plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers now.

Things to Sow:

Beetroot
Broad Beans
Early Peas (but they may do best started in a gutter in the greenhouse then slipped into a trench)
Brussels sprouts – early varieties like Peer Gynt will be ready in September
Kohl Rabi
Leeks
Lettuce
Radish
Parsnips
Spinach Beet
Early Turnips

Sow in Heat:

Windowsill or a propagator in the greenhouse will come into use now to start off your tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and cucumbers.

Under Cloche :

Summer cabbages and early cauliflowers, early carrots will get away best under a cloche. If you set your cloche up a week or two beforehand, it will warm up the soil so you will get even better results.
Many of the crops you can sow directly will also benefit from cloching, especially as you move northwards or started off in modules in a cool greenhouse or coldframe and then planted out later.

Fruit - Planting & Pruning :

There is still time to finish planting bare rooted fruit trees and bushes, especially raspberries and other cane fruits.

Early this month you can still prune apple and pear trees while they are still dormant. It's also time to prune gooseberries and currants. With currants shorten the sideshoots to just one bud and remove old stems from the centre of the bushes. They'll benefit from some compost spread around the base as well

 

 

Source: Vegetable Growing Month By Month by John Harrison