A greenhouse is a godsend, SAYS ALAN TITCHMARSH
GETTY Alan Titchmarsh recommends a greenhouse for the new gardener
First, get the soil into shape.Even when it has been regularly used for intensive crops it will still benefit from having extra organic matter worked in - old growing bags, well-rotted manure or garden compost are all ideal. Next, rake in a dressing of blood, fish and bone or organic general fertiliser to replace nutrients taken out of the soil by previous crops and restore the soil to peak fertility. Then wait for the weather. There's no point sowing seeds of even the hardiest crops until the soil temperature reaches an average of about 45F, so if you have a soil thermometer stick it in and keep a record of the readings. Otherwise read the natural signs: watch for weeds starting to germinate, wait another week and you should be safe to sow crops. Or simply cheat and cover the ground with cloches or a sheet of black polythene to warm it up early. A couple of weeks, and you should be good to go. Things you can sow early include spring onions, rocket, baby spinach leaves and forcing varieties of carrots and radish - any early varieties will do but if the packet says "suitable for growing early under glass" then you are on to a winner.
The great advantage of chitting is that it gives you much earlier crops Alan Titchmarsh
If you can find some young Hispi cabbage plants at a nursery, put a few of those in too. Water them all in and apply an organic slug remedy. Crops sown or planted in a soil border in a greenhouse don't need any extra protection but cover outdoor crops with cloches or fleece straightaway. Meanwhile sow some seeds of sugar snap peas or mangetouts in small pots on a cool windowsill indoors so you have nice young plants ready in a few weeks' time. Plant them out under cover when they are no more than an inch high. In another month or so, when slightly more spring-like weather comes round, sow some more of the same things again so you have crops coming on in succession, also add mixed salad leaves and lettuces. Little Gem is good since it matures quickly, being so small.
GETTY Alan suggests 'chitting' – causing a potato to sprout by putting it in a cold, light place
By then you can get away with sowing early varieties of peas, sugar snaps, mangetouts and one of the early shelling varieties in situ, as long as mice or claggy soil aren't a problem. They'll follow on nicely after the plants you started earlier on your windowsills have finished cropping. Besides getting your green fingers back into gear, the great thing about starting early is that, while less provident friends and neighbours are still paying through the nose for greengrocery that has been freighted all the way from Africa or South America, you'll be enjoying fresh, tasty, home-grown garden produce - and all for free. Get a head start on new potatoes BABY new potatoes are among the tastiest, most worthwhile crops you can grow and you can't start too soon. Buy seed potatoes of an early variety such as Rocket, Epicure, Foremost or Pentland Javelin and sit the tubers in old egg boxes, with the "eyes" uppermost, to sprout (known in the trade as "chitting"). Keep them indoors in a not too warm room in good light and after a few weeks they'll have produced short, plump shoots. When these are half to an inch long the tubers are ready to plant.
If you have space for a few large pots or a growing bag in the greenhouse or conservatory, plant a few in there in early or mid-March, three tubers to a 12in pot and six or eight to a growing bag. No heating is needed unless there's a hard frost forecast. A few layers of newspaper is usually enough for insulation, until the shoots grow too tall. Outdoors, it's not really safe to plant first early potato tubers until the last week in March but see what the weather looks like and if it's cold and wet, or we're having hard frosts, delay it for another week or so. Plant the tubers 3in-4in deep so that by the time shoots show the frosts are past. Otherwise "earth" them up with a hoe by mounding enough soil over the rows to bury all the shoots and any developing foliage.