The Vegetable Plot - December

Enjoy your festive vegetables

Are you enjoying the fruits, or rather the vegetables of your labours? Crops in season include Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, celery, celeriac, leeks, parsnips and more. All set for Christmas.

But what about next year? You can be digging over the vegetable patch and incorporating well-rotted manure and your homemade compost but consider what is to be planted and where. Potatoes and carrots won’t like the soil rich whereas peas, runner beans, leeks and marrows like lots of organic matter. So take the time to do a little planning and consider other aspects of planting around the garden to add to your list for the coming months.

If you have a heated greenhouse or frame you can have mustard and cress, lettuce, chicory, endive and radishes all growing for the festive season. Outside, protect cauliflower from the frosts with horticultural fleece and continue forcing rhubarb and chicory and blanching endive.  

• Other seasonal crops: Jerusalem artichokes, kale, Savoy cabbage
• Make successional sowings of mustard and cress and radishes in a warm greenhouse or frame
• Check your stored vegetables and remove any rotted or diseased ones
• Check vegetable plantings for signs they have lifted after frost and firm them back in 
• Protect celery by covering the ridges with dry straw or bracken