Beetroot are another easy vegetable to grow in your garden and can be planted (sowed) from now (early May).
They're really delicious and versatile and can be eaten raw in salads, cooked or even pickled if you enjoy doing this!
Beetroot are a great vegetable to plant with kids too, since the seeds are on the larger side and a bit easier to handle.
Here's how to do it ...
- Choose a site or raised bed with soil that has not had any manure added in the past several months - beets like soil that isn't too rich!
- Beets are part of the same family as chard so they can be grown together.
- The day before, put your seeds in a plastic sealable bag with moist paper towels over and underneath them and leave at room temperature - this helps the seeds to germinate before planting so you should have better success.
- Dig over the soil and break up any lumps and even out with a rake. Add a small handful of general fertiliser (eg Growmore) each few feet squared.
- Mark your rows with string tied to plastic pegs - this makes it easier to see the beetroot seedlings when they come up and to weed around them.
- Plant seeds in rows 1" deep, with rows 12" apart and seeds about 2" from each other in the row. If the weather is still a little chilly, you can cover with horticultural fleece but remove once it warms up or the seedlings become visible!
- The seeds will take about 2 weeks to come up. The seeds are actually not single seeds but clusters of seeds so don't be surprised if a couple come up in the same spot!
- When the seedlings are about 1-2" high, thin (remove) the weaker looking ones (careful not to disturb the ones around the one you're keeping) so that you have one seedling every 4".
- Companion plants: sage, onion, kholrabi and lettuce
Onions are a great crop to try - they're easy to plant and taste so much better when you grow them yourself!
You can grow onions from seed but it's far easier and you will have more success by growing onion 'sets'. These are basically little, immature onions that are planted singly and each will grow into a full-size onion.
These days there is a good selection of onion sets so go for a variety that best suits your purpose - this year I planted 'Santero', a white onion which stores well, and 'Red Baron', which also stores well, since I like to have onions last me throughout the winter months.
So, for onion crop success:
1. Choose the right place and time... a sunny spot that where you didn't grow the onion family last year and where it has not been manured in the past several months (this can cause onions to rot) is the first thing to consider. Your onion bed can be just onions or combined with other crops from the onion (allium) family, including shallots, garlic and leeks. Their companion plant (if you are into such things) is mint, which deters onion fly! The time to plant onions is from mid-March to mid-April depending on how far north you live.
2. Prep the bed ... once you have chosen which bed to use, dig it over with a garden fork, to 1.5 x the depth of the fork. Remove any weeds or larger rocks. If you have any compost (either homemade or bought) add around one bucketful for each meter square. Then add a small handful / 1 oz Growmore or similar fertiliser and dig in. Rake over so that the bed is even.
3. Mark your rows ... if you like! I am the type of person who likes the idea of nice, neat rows and I also like to have a guide of where I've planted (plus I have a touch of the obsessive!) so I mark out my rows with string tied to little black plastic stakes. Rows should be 30 cm (12 in) apart and the sets themselves should be planted 12cm (5in) apart.
4. Plant the sets ...sets can be round or teardrop shaped but either way, plant with the pointy tip facing up. Gently push your sets into the soil, leaving the tip just visible above the soil and firm gently around each one.
5. Protect your onions ... birds can think that the paper-y top at the tip of the sets is a worm and so like to pull them up, which is super annoying so, to avoid this, I put 2 foot stakes around the edges of the bed and cover the whole lot with netting - nothing fancy - and secure around the edge with rocks or bricks.
It's easy to prep your parsnip bed and a great time to do it. Parsnips, like their cousins the carrot, don't like terribly rich soil so don't add any manure or they will be stunted or 'forked'. They also need rock free soil as if they hit any rock while growing they will decide to head off in a bizarre direction and you won't get nice straight, large veg. So ...
- think about the bed you want to use (not freshly manured)
- give it a good dig over with a garden fork
- remove any rocks or stones
- leave the bed open for a couple of weeks - the birds will remove lots of pests for you and get a much needed meal too!
- once the soil is steadily around 50F or 10C, it's time to sow your seeds; put in as soon as this temperature is reached, parsnips need a long growing season
- remember to sow fresh parsnip seeds each year - they don't keep well
- sow seeds thinly around 1 inch deep in a row marked with a string
- be patient - they can take a couple of weeks to germinate!
Now's the perfect time to make sure you have a great fruit crop this season, starting with pruning your autumn raspberries, here's a few great, simple tips to get you started!
