Grow your own veg box

Spring vegetables

Image: Spring bounty, first week in May (clockwise from top left): unforced rhubarb; bunching (spring) onion ‘Winter Over’; leek ‘Musselburgh’; radish ‘Rougette’; Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’; spring cabbage ‘Offenham Myatts Compacta’; asparagus ‘Conover’s Colossal’; spinach ‘Bloomsdale’.

Also in season: leaf lettuce (hearts later), sprouting broccoli; by June: carrots, beetroot, overwintered broad beans

Perennials

ASPARAGUS Sometimes considered difficult to grow, asparagus is reliable and worthwhile as long as a few ground rules are borne in mind.
First, plant crowns in clean soil: all perennial weeds must be dug out first and prevent annuals from seeding thereafter.
Second, although growing on ridges is sometimes recommended, asparagus also grows well on flat ground where it is also easier to hoe and weed.

Plant crowns in early spring at 90x45cm (36x18in) spacings or sow seed in pots and plant them out the following spring. Pick no spears in the first year after planting, a few in the second spring, some more in the third year and for the whole season from late April to late June thereafter. Either cut or snap spears at soil level when they are 15–25cm (6–10in) long.

Spread 2–3cm (1in) of compost or manure on the whole bed every winter, run strings or wires alongside plants’ edges to help stems keep upright in summer and autumn, and pinch off any asparagus beetles you see.

F1 cultivars have the advantage of slightly higher yields and (because they are all male) of not making berries, which can shed a lot of seeds. If left to grow, these make for weedy plants with thin spears, so they are best removed.

RHUBARB The rhubarb cultivar here is grown from a root I was given: I do not know its name but it often yields the first tender stalks, without forcing, in early March.

Forcing involves placing a pot over roots in order to make stems grow lighter and somewhat sweeter. They also grow more quickly but may be nibbled by slugs inside the pot. After April pots should be removed to allow leaves to convert energy from sunlight to re-nourish their roots.

Rhubarb can be sown in spring, planted out in summer at 90cm (3ft) spacing, to pick thereafter from March to June, leaving summer growth to feed the plants for the following year.

Rhubarb can also be planted as a piece of root chopped off older crowns between October and February.

There are not many cultivars: ‘Timperley Early’ and ‘Glaskin’s Perpetual’ shoot a little before ‘Victoria’.

Annuals

RADISH This grows fast, sown outdoors from early March, offering baby roots in as little as four weeks from sowings in warmer weather. Do not sow too thickly or you will have more leaves than root; aim for 25x2.5cm (10x1in) or scatter some seeds on top of a compost-filled container. Growth after April can be diminished by flea beetles eating leaves and this usually happens less in containers. Covering with fleece is another option.

Radishes similar to ‘French Breakfast’ cultivars, such as ‘Mirabeau’, have longer roots with a white tip, while round-rooted cultivars are normally red, such as ‘Rougette’ and ‘Rudi’. There are also yellow and purple strains, and many varied cultivars of larger-growing radish for sowing in August, to eat in late autumn and winter, either raw or stir-fried.

SPINACH/CHARD These come in many forms. Chard and spinach beet are biennials, which offer repeated pickings of new leaves soon after sowing between April and early August. They survive mild winters and offer new pickings in early spring until flowering in May. ‘Erbette’ is a good-flavoured cultivar of spinach beet, while chard comes in cultivars of many different colours.

Spring spinach of deeper flavour and with more tender leaves is possible from sowings of annual cultivars such as ‘Tarpy’ F1 and ‘Bloomsdale’ in March and April. Earlier sowings give more pickings before flowering in May and June; for sowing after mid-April, use a later-flowering, slightly slower-growing cultivar such as ‘Tetona’ F1. Spinach can be sown indoors (from early February), for instance with four seeds in modules to plant out at 25x25cm (10x10in) apart, or outdoors in rows 30cm (12in) apart, seeds every 2.5cm (1in) or so; it also grows well in containers.

Be vigilant for slugs; woodlice also love baby spinach leaves, and sowing indoors can avoid losses to them. Baby leaves are delicious in salad, especially of annual spinach.

SPRING CABBAGE There are a range of cultivars with either pointed or round hearts and they can be grown at closer spacing for green leaves. Recent mild autumns have pushed the ideal sowing date back, from mid- to the end of August. Sowing too early can result in premature hearting before Christmas, sowing too late means small plants in autumn that may not resist slugs. You may need to cover with netting or protect in some way against pigeons.

Seed can be sown in modules, trays or an outdoor seed bed for planting 45x45cm or 30x60cm (18x18in or 12x24in) apart. Spacing for greens can be as close as 10cm (4in) apart. Spring cabbage is extremely frost hardy and also grows in any milder spells to make hearts from April to early June, depending on cultivar. For pointed hearts, ‘Myatt’s Offenham Compacta’ (Offenham 1 group) is a reliable old cultivar and ‘Pyramid’ F1 a versatile new one. For round hearts, ‘Spring Hero’ F1 makes large heads in May and early June.

SPRING/SALAD ONION For harvesting before late May, these need sowing in late August or early September, to overwinter as small, frost-hardy plants that thicken up in any mild weather. They can be harvested from late March onwards, depending on how large you want to eat them.

If sown before the last week of August they are more likely to make a seed stem in spring. Seed can be sown direct, placing seeds every centimetre (about every half inch) in rows about 30cm (12in) apart, or sow eight to 10 seeds in small pots or modules for planting out in late September. They are a useful catch crop between, for example, broad beans and courgettes.

Weeds must be controlled to prevent them shading the plants. Hand-weeding is the method as grasses, bittercress and chickweed cannot be hoed in winter’s damp soil.

The standard cultivar for overwintering is ‘Winter Over’ (also called ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’). In late spring it eventually makes sweet white bulbs, while cultivars such as ‘Feast’ F1 and ‘Ramrod’ convert their growth into longer, thicker stems.

LEEKS See autumn

For even more detailed information, see our vegetables A-Z section