Early spring opportunities in vegetable growing

An exciting month ahead for vegetable growing.
Sow under cover includes tomatoes, celery, celeriac from 10th, melon watermelon loofah and early leeks in March’s last week. Find more monthly details here https://youtu.be/1HtBMfbJ_nY

Sow carrots outside from equinox, also Jerusalem artichoke, onion sets. For early potatoes – know your last frost date, plant first earlies probably late March.

Transplant, there are so many possibilities, I show at what stage and how deep
Harden off? No worries! Use a cover
Covers for new plantings, fleece for warmth, thicker grade
Hoops for covers? eg wire, check for wind damage
PESTS Cover vs flea beetle and tidy to reduce slug habitat
Keep beds ready – weeding, raking, tidy plastic, clear cover crops if in the way
Prepare new beds eg with plastic on compost
Sow wildflowers, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESpV5B_ntNw
Harvests are increasing such as overwintered spinach – reference other harvests

Seeds from https://tamarorganics.co.uk/product-category/vegetable-varieties
Long dibber from https://www.gardenimports.co.uk/product/charles-dowding-long-handled-ash-dibber/?v=79cba1185463
Fleece and mesh from https://www.paidonresults.net/c/57860/1/1762/0
CD module trays from UK and international stockists: https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/store/gardening-products

00:00 Introduction
00:25 Sowing opportunities
01:25 Tomatoes – my recommended sowing times
02:00 Sowing celery and celeriac
02:18 Sowing melons, cucumbers, watermelons and loofahs
02:41 Sowing leeks
03:01 Outdoor sowing possibilities
03:23 Different categories of potatoes, different sowing times
03:54 Transplanting frost-hardy early sowings
04:46 How to transplant – I demonstrate with a pea plant
06:38 Transplanting onions
07:17 Hardening off – is it necessary?
07:46 The benefits of using covers
08:43 Different grades of fleece, how to secure, and how to store
10:00 Different types of cover – Thermacrop, Enviromesh, and bird netting
11:14 Weeding
11:57 Creating new beds, and using black plastic or cardboard to smother weeds
12:59 Harvests – spinach, spring cabbage, spring onion
13:42 Managing slugs
14:24 Wildflower seeds sown after smothering weeds with black plastic
15:24 Drier through March, less watering needed

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– March, we have an exciting month ahead. The sun is getting warmer and stronger. There’s a lot we can do now, that we haven’t been able to do before. There’s sowing, planting, weeding, picking, preparing new ground, loads of vegetables you can get underway, and look after through this exciting month.

The good news in March is, there are more sowing possibilities, because of the increasing light and warmth. You can still sow anything that is sowable in February if you haven’t done it yet, or if you want to grow some more, but allow a bit of an interval.

If you want a succession say of radish, wait a good three weeks between the previous sowing before you sow again. Because in spring, and through the spring, sowings tend to catch up, which is why we don’t have to worry too much about being a bit late. I’m often asked,

Is it too late to do this in in the spring? It is never too late, so don’t worry if you’ve missed a week or two even. So all those February sowings, and then the exciting new ones are again, you might have done them, but pepper, chilli, aubergine. So that’s the warmth loving plants.

And the reason I’m sowing them a bit earlier than even tomatoes is because they’re quite slow. They take a bit of time. Do have a look at the video, we’re just putting up about that. And then tomatoes is the big one, and some of you I’m sure, will have sowed your tomatoes already.

I haven’t. I sow mine on the 10th of March on average. It’s not a date written in stone. In fact, I’m going to be away, as it happens on the 10th of March. So when I say 10th, in my case this year, it might be the 13th. So you know of that ilk.

I would say the second week of March is a very good time to sow tomatoes of any kind. If you’re planning to grow them outdoors, you could sow them a bit later, even towards the end of March, early April, and through also under cover sowing in March. You’ve got celery, celeriac, coming up,

If you haven’t sown them already. Celery and celeriac, they’re very small seeds, so just sow them on the surface of compost. They actually need light to germinate. So make it fully moist, sheet of glass over the top, and keep them on a windowsill say, and probably within seven to 10 days you’ll see

A tiny hint of green. Towards the end of the month, you can sow melons. I recommend not sowing them before that, because they need constant warmth to keep growing healthily. And it’s same with cucumbers. Cucumbers actually I recommend for April, but melons take a bit longer,

So late March is good. As well as melon, you could sow watermelon and loofahs, if you want to grow them. I normally grow one luffa plant every year, and leeks we’re coming up to time. I know some people sow them in February, I’ve found that’s not particularly good.

They might tend to bolt a bit. So last week of March for early varieties of leeks, and maybe the main sowing sometime in April. So we’ll look at that when we get to April video. With the increasing warmth and light, finally it’s good to do some outdoor sowings,

And from about the middle of March, when the day length is really getting appreciable. So carrots in particular, I like to sow them around the equinox, ’cause the sun, by then, is so rapidly getting warmer, and always put a fleece over that first sowing,

’cause they do need the extra warmth just to get them going. You could also sow peas, broad beans outside, and early potatoes. So we have the categories in the UK, first early, second early, main crop. I plant first earlies towards the end of March, second earlies, second week of April.

Main crop, third week of April roughly. And you’re just watching always the last frost date. So that’s why it’s better to wait before planting potatoes. They do grow really fast once they’re in warm soil, so don’t worry if you’re a little bit late on potatoes either.

But the first earliest definitely by the end of March, and then we’re moving towards planting out as well. So these early sowings that we’ve done, particularly the February ones through March, they come ready for transplanting. So we’re going to go and look at that now, and look at options for transplanting and methods.

So what are we transplanting in March? Everything that we have sown in February, coming ready as transplants. It’s all frost hardy. So it’s things like lettuce, spinach, peas for shoots, and for pods, broad beans, onions, spring onions, early cabbage, early calabrese, early cauliflowers, a long list of fantastic vegetables,

Beetroot that can go in the ground, with not too many worries about the weather. We’ll look at how you can use covers to mitigate weather conditions, but basically catch those transplants quite young, and there’s a lot of things you can put in the ground through March. And then, how to transplant.

There’s a lot to learn about this, and to do it in a really good way. It’s all common sense. You can find details such as spacing, and how deep to put them in and that kind of thing, in my Skills book, it’s why I wrote that book.

It’s ’cause, to just get really clear, help you to have success from doing things in the best way. And that means things like, how do you know when a plant is ready? That’s when the module roots are not too developed. So here we got these peas,

And normally I’d reckon to get my peas in, probably about five days before this. ‘Cause once they get to this stage, you’ll see if I pull one out, look at that, number of roots are quite phenomenal, and that means that the, whoops, sorry, actually that’s lucky,

Because it’s really holding together by the roots, but the roots, they’ve been sitting there for a while, not being able to do much. And I don’t actually tease them apart at this stage ’cause I found they’re all burst out of that, that if this does happen to you.

But what you can do is put them in deeper, because generally speaking, when I transplant, I reckon to have all the stem below ground, and that means making quite a deep hole. A long-handled dibber is really useful for that. It’s got good leverage there. It can go as deep as you like,

But because this is no dig compost on top, it’s very easy to make, it’s soft to make a deep hole. Pop it in and that’s it. So I pushed down on the actual root ball there. I want to help those roots to make sure they’ve got firm contact

With the existing soil and compost in the bed. And so your holes will vary in depth a bit, in terms of spacing, well do check out the book also. We’ve got a module, a Useful Information online package from my website you can find with all spacings in.

Onions, like, they can be anything between that and that. You can transplant at many different stages. But generally I would say younger is better. Do you need to water them in? Well, if I was going to water these in, I would do it very gently,

Because they’re small seedlings so a fine rose on the end of the watering can is good. Just something like that. And often it’s about just helping there to be contact between the root ball and the soil, and compost of the bed. Usually I’ll water the trays before transplanting,

’cause that way you know that the root ball is nice and saturated at the moment you put it in the bed. Hardening off. Do you need to harden off? Well, it’s often recommended you do. I actually don’t and everything grows, but using the covers helps in the early plantings.

In the summer I just bring things out the greenhouse, and put them straight in the ground. Conditions actually aren’t that much different, but at this time of year in March, your transplants are going into cool soil. There’s no benefit I found from covering before planting. So that’s one job less.

So you’re just putting your transplants into quite cool ground often. But putting the cover over straight away ensures that any little bit of sunshine, even today it’s a grey day, but there is sunlight coming down enough to warm the ground under a cover like this. So in March we have strong light,

But not much temperature, and that’s where the covers really come into their own. Because if you think by the equinox in March, we’ve got the same amount of sunlight as in the equinox in September. A lot of light but not much temperature.

So you lose a bit of light with a cover like this, but it is warm, that’s why the cat likes it. She’ll often lie on these covers, and sometimes make little holes actually. But just having it on the plant, these have suffered a bit of damage, ’cause they went in too early.

That was a trial I was doing. But normally by the time we get to middle of March, and almost when you’re planting out and this cover on top, and it dries out enough, it’s not wet all the time, and that holds the warmth right close to the leaves where it’s most valuable.

So that’s fleece. This is 30 gramme a square metre, roughly a bit more than one ounce a square yard. You can find it in lighter grades but don’t go too light, because then it fragments and blows away. So you want a reasonably thick one, but not too thick would be ideal.

And then you could put it on hoops. The reason I generally don’t in March, is ’cause and April we get a lot of wind. When the covers are on hoops, especially fleece, the wind can get under it, and blow it off when it’s on the ground.

So if you’re in a windy location especially, keep it low means it doesn’t blow away. And quite heavy stones I would say, these are a nice heavy brick, actually that’s really good. Every metre or so along the side. And there are different types of cover you can use,

And we’ll go and look at them now. For covers when we’re not using them, I loop them over battens like this, so that they’re not on the ground, where mice could nest in them, it just keeps them out of harm’s way. And here we’ve got the different covers I can show you.

So that’s fleece that I just mentioned. And actually this is a slightly thinner grade, you can still see my hand through that. And this is the one I prefer. It’s 25 grammes per square metre, but it’s very hard to find for some reason. If you can find it, I’d warmly recommend it.

The 30’s a bit thicker and more opaque. And then next grade up from fleece, in terms of strength is this material called Thermacrop. Thermacrop, you can see it’s a woven fabric, so it’s stronger, it doesn’t tear so easily, and yet it has got a few holes in,

So it’s not so effective against insects as mesh. And this is sometimes called Enviromesh. I think that’s a trade name more. It’s woven mesh, you’ve got two pieces there. So it’s very fine little squares of nylon thread, and those holes are just like one,

Or two millimetres so most insects cannot get in there. So this is top insect protection. We’ve got some actually on top of wild rocket at the moment, to keep flea beetle off. And because the mesh is a bit heavier than fleece, I tend to put hoops in the ground to support its weight,

Particularly at this time of year in the early spring. Whereas the fleece, we don’t do that so often ’cause of it blowing off. And then there’s a fourth kind of cover, which is nothing to do with warmth, but that’s just keeping pests off, ’cause the mesh does have a bit of warmth.

This one doesn’t but it’s just about, it’s bird netting basically, with roughly 12 millimetre, half inch squares. During March you will notice a lot of new weeds appearing or existing weed seedlings suddenly becoming very big. And I was just weeding amongst some rye here, which I’m growing for grain actually.

And it doesn’t take long when the ground is soft after winter frost often, especially with no dig, you can pull out weeds quite easily before they get too big. And I was pulling out a dock here, it’s got a long root already but it just pulled out nicely.

And the buttercup with those creeping tenacious roots, if you catch them before they’re too big, it’s a lot easier. You don’t even need a trowel. So you can weed through when the weeds are small, nice and quickly and it’s a really good job for March with weeds.

Stay ahead, be on top of them, don’t let them get on top of you. It’s still possible in March to create new beds, new no dig beds like here where we put compost on top of, without any cardboard on top of existing weeds which you can now see pushing through.

So that’s why in this case I have black plastic on top. That’s one way of doing no dig beds, if you have a lot of weeds to smother while still growing. We’re going to plant some squash here towards the end of May. You could plant potatoes as well,

Put them through a hole in the plastic. But the important thing is the key principle with no dig is if you’ve got strong perennial weeds, like dandelions, buttercups, docks, maybe nettles, bindweed, you need either a strategy, like something on top to smother them, stop them finding light,

And then the roots in the soil will eventually die. Or if this could have been with cardboard underneath, if we put some decent, thick cardboard, with the compost on top, there wouldn’t be any of these weeds here yet. They might come later, and then you would need to be pulling them out.

There are now some beautiful harvests we can take and overwintered plants in particular, because they’ve got a strong root system from last autumn, they’re growing strongly like the spinach here. And then I’ve also got spring cabbage that we put in last autumn and spring onion, salad onions.

And what I do and I’ve been doing here like last week, we picked quite a bit of leaf for salad, actually, these spinach, true spinach like this, it’s beautiful raw, and so that’s how I like to eat it at this time of year. What a healthy food in March, in early spring,

The overwintered. The flavour’s quite sweet from the cold weather. And what I’m doing is picking off the good leaves, and then, this leads onto slugs in particular, which you can often find hiding under these ageing leaves at the bottom. A tidying up job is really worthwhile. That’s what I like to do anyway,

Because it’s reducing habitat for slugs. But we often find doing that, you’ll find slugs and snails, and those are perhaps one of the biggest potential problems at this time of year, new plantings and everything. So it’s where it really helps to have minimum habitat for slugs.

No wooden sides to your beds if you can. And compost mulch, just reduce the hiding places, keep the garden really tidy. Another job for early March in particular, if you had a lot of weeds like I had here, this was beautiful wild flowers around the new pond two years ago,

And we cut them down, left them to regrow, but most of what regrew was grass and buttercup weeds, some dandelions. So since November we’ve had black plastic on them and in three and a half months, that’s done a great job of nullifying. It hasn’t killed all the buttercup weed dandelions,

They’ll come back, but much weaker. So what I can do now is sow some seeds, so they’ll be here a lot of wildflower seeds, and they’ve just fallen. It’s amazing how they do come back from plants that were there already. I’m just going to scatter a few more,

Just to give more chance and this is a very good thing to do in say early March, because you will be giving them more time to meet the moisture. It’s going to dry up through March. Just something to really always bear in mind. And with early plantings you’ve got more chance

Of not needing to do much watering. I don’t want to be here doing maintenance ongoing. So it’s just to get this all sorted, and we’ll see what happens by May and June.