HOW TO PREPARE THE VEG PATCH

If you grow vegetables, dig your soil now to let air in and, if appropriate, add organic material ready for breaking down, sowing and planting in a month or two.

■ Use a spade, not a fork – it will take out large clods and let in more air. Remove perennial weed roots such as bindweed.

■ Start by digging a trench a spade deep and a spade wide. Put the excavated soil into a barrow. Move back the width of a spade and dig the next trench, using the soil you take out to fill the first one. It will fall into it at an angle, sloping away from you at 45 degrees. Spread a layer of manure or compost over this soil.

■ Continue digging trenches in this way, moving soil from each new one to the one before it.

■ When you reach the last trench, use the soil in the barrow to fill it. The soil level will now be higher than the surrounding area, but this will gently subside.