februarys organic veg patch

The Garlic is going strong, but not much else.

Preperation is the key for february, it may feel as if you will never plant anything again but next month will be the start of this years crop, so the more you can do this month the better. This is the best time to be planning the plot and ordering seeds if you have not done so already. Also it’s good to clean pots and tubs that may harbour disease, you don’t want to lose the years crop through last years diseases.

Don’t forget to get compost ready for planting seeds, I like to bag mine up or put it in a tub trug ready for sowing. This makes life easy when you have loads of trays to fill and sow.

I like to add the compost and well rotted manure to the plot now giving the worms time to start to take it in ready for the next few months sowing. A good place to look for manure is a local livery yard they love to get rid of the stuff and if you offer to collect it and dig it yourself you should get it for nothing. Although I did iall that last month as it was so warm, so I have more time to look through seed catalogues.

If you decided to mulch your veg patch last month you may be able to get away with a few early sowings as you will have warmed the soil slightly by possibly a few degrees, even if you did’nt do it last month it is never to late to mulch. Plant possibly beetroot, summer cabbage, give them a go.

This year I’m going to grow my first ever crop of potatoes, I only ever bothered with a few plants, as I like to grow the veg that is more expensive or travels further. In the past my focus was to give less space to the crops which were cheaper to buy and grow that which was more expensive, I think that it comes from having a small garden. Anyway now is the time to chit your potatoes, Gardeners world did an experiment which proved it was good to chit early potatoes and not to bother chitting later potatoes, they should know, so I ‘am giving it a go.

I don’t yet have a greenhouse/polytunnel so I rely on the windowsill to start seeds off and then they are on there own but if you do there is a multitude of things that can be started off now, buy your seeds and check the back of the packet, they really are very useful. My grandmother’s greenhouse has a fine crop of lettuce as good as my summer sowings.

All gardens wherever they are in England have there own microclimate ,I like to test out mine from time to time, to see what will grow and what won’t, most information is general so will never be specific to your location. Even a neighbours garden may have a different climate to yours so my advice is to experiment a bit , don’t throw a whole year away but try out a few left over seeds and see what happens, you will learn more than you can ever learn from a book.