With all the frost that we have had, the large lumps of soil will have been broken down. Use your rake to obtain a fine level tilth.

            Now it is time to visit an outlet which sells seeds, ‘seed’ potatoes and onion sets.  Make your own choice of vegetable seeds such as lettuce, spring onions, radishes, beetroot, turnips, parsnips and carrots.  Do not sow the carrots until the first week in July, when they are best sowed between rows of onion sets, which were planted earlier in rows a trowel width apart.

            When the soil temperature begins to rise in March, usually indicated by the growth of weeds, make a garden line with string and two pieces of cane. As the temperature rises make a half inch deep drill with a corner of your rake, sow your seeds thinly in rows a trowel width apart. Label the rows. Choose a small quantity of early   potatoes. Plant them 4 or 5 inches deep and a trowel length apart. If there is more than one row, make the rows 2 trowel widths apart.

            In April choose a dwarf early pea such as Kelvedon Wonder. Make a 2 inch deep drill with the corner of your rake and sow the seeds 2 inches apart. A second row, half a trowel width from the first may be added. Try to gather some two foot sticks to push in at either side of the rows.

            In May, make a wigwam with 5, 8 foot canes, pushing the canes firmly into the ground 1 foot apart, making a circle and tied at the top with string. Obtain some runner bean plants from the plant stall in the Market Place on the 29th of May.  Place one plant per cane.

            If you have any room left, buy a few cabbage plants and plant them firmly one foot apart. Watch out for pigeons!

            Extra feed beside ‘Blood, Fish and Bone’ may be added every 3 or 4 weeks during the growing period in the form of dried pelleted poultry manure.

            I hope your vegetables taste very good!

 Keith Redfern, Secretary, Horticultural Society.