The Vegetable Plot - February

What’s on the plot?

For those of us in milder areas and with sandy loam there’s a good chance the soil will have warmed up enough to be sowing a variety of vegetables under cloches. Carrots, parsnips, peas, spinach, summer cabbage, salad onions, broad beans, beetroot, radishes and lettuces are enough to keep you going for a while. Garlic and shallots can go into light soil.


Where soil is heavy though it will need longer to warm so you will need to hold on until late in the month or into March. Around mid-month if you have a heated greenhouse you can be getting on with tomatoes and cucumbers from seed. Otherwise grow your tomato seed indoors for late planting in the greenhouse or outside.

In late February you can be sowing turnips, early celery, French beans for succession, main crop tomatoes, melons and cucumbers.

• Complete pruning of apple and pear trees, currants and gooseberries
• Plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers
• Chit seed potato tubers if you haven’t already
• Prune established autumn-fruiting raspberries
• Winter prune red currents and gooseberries
• Prune citrus trees