Images: Tim Sandall
As the soil starts to warm up and dry out in April, vegetable crops can be sown. Sow seed both indoors and out to ensure your vegetable garden is fully productive this year.
Vegetable plots are traditionally sown and planted around Easter, which usually gives the soil a chance to dry out and warm up after winter, and the gardener to cultivate it. Weed seedlings on a vegetable patch can actually be useful in spring. They are like a gardening barometer: their germination shows that the soil is ready to be sown and planted. But if your soil is still cold and wet, there's still time to speed up the process by covering beds with clear plastic or cloches (below).
Plan carefully where you are going to sow, especially if you are following a rotation system. Ideally, the same vegetables should not be grown in the same place for at least three years and root crops, such as carrot and parsnip, dislike growing in freshly manured soil.
Crops to sow indoors
Many vegetables can be pre-sown in pots and cell trays in spring in the greenhouse and on the windowsill for planting out when the soil is ready. This ensures early cropping and the possibility of a second follow-on crop in late summer. When seedlings have sufficient roots to bind the compost, transplant them into prepared beds (left).
Although an early start is useful, the actual gain is not as much as you might think - April sowings are seldom far behind those made in February and March.
You can sow the following indoors for early crops:
Early April: calabrese, cauliflower, tomato (right), summer cabbage, parsley and basil.
Mid-April: French beans, sweet corn**, pumpkin** and squash** (end of month)
Early May: Runner beans**, courgette**.
Sowing directly outside
Other vegetables can be sown directly outdoors as soon as the soil is workable*:
Early April: Beetroot, broad beans, carrot (can repeat sow up until mid-July), leeks, lettuce and radish (can repeat sow up until mid-July), peas and onion sets.
Mid-April: Sprouting broccoli, kale, potatoes (second early, salad and maincrop), summer salads (cut & come again)
May: French beans** (can repeat sow up until mid-July), runner beans**; courgette and winter cabbage
Key
* Delay for two weeks in northern and other cold districts
** Success is most likely in northern and other cold districts if horticultural fleece or cloches are used to boost early growth
Can’t sow, won’t sow
If you’d rather not raise your own vegetable plants from seed, young plants of almost all vegetables can be bought from nurseries, garden centres and by mail order from seed suppliers. However, the choice of cultivars is much more limited than those available from seed.
Leigh Hunt and Fiona Dennis