The Vegetable Plot - March

Sow to your heart’s content

This month you can sow a dazzling variety of vegetables if you’re so inclined, and your plot is large enough and the weather fair; or simply be content with your favourite veg. Sow under cloches if the soil is sandy and you’re in a mild area.

Broad beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, lettuces and more in the list below will keep the vegetables on the table. If you have light soil you can plant out garlic and shallots – heavy soils need longer to warm up.
A great way to sow peas in the greenhouse is in cleaned out old guttering with holes drilled in the bottom. Chit potatoes if you haven’t already started them – egg boxes are always handy for this – and you can put early potatoes in the ground now. Dig out trenches in well prepared ground, about a spade deep and 60cm/2ft apart. Put manure in the bottom and the tubers on top. Add some fertiliser such as Growmore to the dug-out soil, then mound it up over the potatoes.

Don’t forget to develop your system of crop rotation in the vegetable plot and rotate your crop and check if you have acid soil – you can get a soil metre online or at the garden centre – and if so work in some lime. Asparagus beds can be started now and asparagus can be sown under glass.

• Sow broad beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflowers, dwarf French beans, kale, kohl rabi, lettuces, onions, parsley, parsnips, peas, radishes, seakale, shallots, spinach, Swedes, tomatoes and turnips
• Under glass sow asparagus, cucumbers, dwarf French beans, leeks, lettuces, marrows, melons, onions, parsley, peas, rhubarb, seakale, tomatoes
• Freeze extra vegetables such as spinach, Swiss chard and beans for the winter
• Cover rhubarb with forcing buckets or pots to encourage long, tender stalks
• Make succession sowings of summer cabbages and cauliflowers
• Start globe artichokes, sweet corn and courgettes