It’s a busy time on the veg plot! There are plenty of crops to sow now – and some will be ready in weeks
Helping you get your best-ever fruit and veg
There are plenty of veg to start sowing now that we’re at the end of January, and by selecting the right varieties for the time of year you’ll be one step ahead when spring arrives. I started some of my chilli seeds last week, but another crop that benefits from a long growing season and is better started early is the aubergine.
I normally grow the larger-fruited varieties from grafted plants as I find they give better results for me, but the smaller and thinner-fruited varieties are brilliant to grow from seed. Last year I discovered ‘Hansel F1’, which produced lots of slim, long fruit that were great to slice and add to dishes; although if you want fat fruit to slice for moussaka, this isn’t the one for you. I’m starting the seeds off in a heated propagator (around 20C/68F) and will eventually grow them in the greenhouse, however, if you’re growing a patio variety outside, you’ll be better off waiting until March to sow the seeds.
I’m also starting a few hardy varieties of lettuce off in the unheated greenhouse. These are special varieties that can cope with the cold and are happy to germinate at lower temperatures, even if they grow a little slower. ‘John’ (yes that really is the name of the lettuce) is a butterhead type to sow at around 10C (50F) then plant into an unheated greenhouse border or under cloches outside once large enough, while ‘Bronze Beauty’ is a heritage variety with maroon/ bronze-flushed leaves, which has grown covered by cloches in the snow at Garden Organic’s Ryton gardens. While new lettuces are being sown, spent lettuce relatives, namely celtuce, are being removed from the garden and composted. These stem lettuces (you eat the fat stem) were new to me last year, but I wasn’t that keen on them, so ended up leaving them in the garden to provide some colour over the winter. Now they’ve begun to flower it’s time to consign them to the compost heap and add a layer of manure to the bed where they grew; this will give me some space for a few rows of peas that I’m sowing in modules. ‘Douce Provence’ is my favourite pea to start between autumn and spring – it’s a tough little plant and produces great-tasting peas. I started some off in autumn, but this sowing will produce peas later than those, so will give me a longer cropping period. If you have any space for these short peas, I really would recommend them.