How and where to sow

Before sowing or planting new vegetables, clear spent summer crops completely, as plant material left in the soil can harbour pests and diseases. Pull up the old plants, getting out all the roots. Diseased material is best burnt or binned. Fork in garden compost or add as a mulch to refresh the soil. If growing in pots, replace the compost.

If you practise crop rotation, growing two crops in the same spot in the course of one year can make it tricky to follow a traditional four-year rotation plan. The good news is that many veg, such as courgettes, French and runner beans and salad leaves, don’t need to be rotated and can be slotted in anywhere.

Two veg families that do benefit from crop rotation, to avoid the build up of soil-borne diseases, are brassicas (cabbages, rocket and Oriental leaves such as mizuna and mustard) and alliums (onions, salad onions and garlic). Brassicas can suffer from clubroot, and alliums from white rot, both of which persist in the soil. If you’ve had outbreaks in the past, don’t grow any crops from the affected group in the same area of ground until the problem has cleared, which can take several years. In a small garden, the most practical way to do this is often to grow in large containers of fresh compost.

Provided you haven’t suffered from clubroot or white rot or any other diseases on your brassicas or alliums, the simplest method of maintaining a crop rotation is to plant brassicas and alliums in the same places now as plants from that family were growing earlier this year. Then try to leave at least two years before growing anything from the same family in the same place again.

For other veg families, try to leave at least a one-year gap between growing veg from the same family in the same soil.

Turn to p93 for more crops to start now