Fruit and veg plot

Sow now (indoors or under cover): Aubergines, beetroot, broad beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, celeriac, celery, leeks, tomatoes.

Sow now (outside): Broad beans, cabbage, calabrese, kale, lettuce, onions, parsnips, peas, radish, spinach, turnips.

Plant now: Jerusalem artichokes, onion sets, potatoes, rhubarb, shallots.

Other jobs:
- Give overwintered crops a feed
- Start manuring tomato beds
- Warm potato beds three weeks before planting the tubers by covering with black plastic (use old soil bags) or old carpet
- Chit early potatoes
- Prepare pea supports
- Dig a trench on the site of your french and runner beans and fill with kitchen waste until a month before planting out (normally mid-May)
- Protect brassicas from pigeons with nets
- Mulch fruit trees, canes and bushes
- Protect peaches, nectarines and apricots from rain and frost
- Give stone fruit, currants and apples and pears an organic feed that is high in nitrogen (try seaweed-based feeds)

Flower garden

Sow now (indoors):Hardy annuals, sweet peas.

Plant now: Summer-flowering bulbs, autumn-sown sweet peas, herbaceous perennials such as geraniums.

Other jobs:
− Give Buddleia a good hard prune, cutting back to within six of seven inches of last year’s growth
- Prune roses
- Divide hostas and hellebores
- Remove the flowering stalks of daffodils, but don’t cut back the leaves, as these are the powerhouse for the bulb to flower on the following year