

Consider starting to chit your potatoes on a cool windowsill so that they will develop shoots before it is time to plant them out in your garden.Think about adding a greenhouse or polytunnel in your garden to prolong the growing season and make it easier to grow food year-round in the UK.If you plan to start growing vegetables for the first time this year, make sure you have a composting system and rainwater harvesting system in place.Decide what, where and how you intend to grow, plan out any new growing areas, and devise plans for crop choices, companion planting, crop rotation etc. If you do not yet have a garden plan in place, now is a great time to start working on your design and plans.Order your annual fruit, vegetable, herb and flower seeds for early spring planting if you have not already done so.Spring is still some time off, even in the warmest parts of the UK, but there is already plenty to be done this month. You might not think about the gardening year beginning in January. Whether you are sowing indoors, undercover in a greenhouse or polytunnel, under cloches or outdoors in the open.īearing these things in mind then, here is a list of sowings, plantings and other jobs that you might consider doing each month: January Tomato seedlings.Your year-round planting schemes and when crops need to be harvested and removed to make way for the next round of planting.Making sure you can harvest food over as long a period as possible.Spreading out the work so you do not give yourself too much to do at one time.The weather in a given year as well as the climate zone in your area and microclimate in your particular garden.When deciding what to plant when in your vegetable garden you need to think about: Most crops have a planting window of several months, and you can vary when you plant based on a wide range of factors.

It is important to treat this list as a guide rather than a rule book. We have only given a few guidelines about what you should be doing when, because there are a lot of variabilities – even just within the UK. We’ve given some tips not only about what to sow and plant when, but also about other garden jobs you should be undertaking. This vegetable planting guide is designed to help you work out where your attention should be directed each month. It is important to remember that planting is only one of the important garden tasks to think about – and when exactly you undertake garden tasks will depend, to a large degree, on where exactly you live and the conditions in your area and your particular garden. A vegetable planting guide can only ever give you a rough idea about what you should be doing in your garden and when.
