Fortis Green Community Allotments Trust

March is the month when things really start to move in the growing season.  In fact, the start of the year used to be the Feast of the Annunciation - 25th March - until 1752, when we in Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar and started our year on 1st January. 

Harvest

Any leeks left standing should come up now – you can freeze them for use in soups and stews.

Parsnips too should come up in early March before they try and re-grow.

You may have spinach beet and chards available, the last of the late Brussels sprouts, winter cauliflowers, kale, swedes, salsify and scorzonera.

Don't forget to keep checking the purple sprouting!

Chitting potatoes

There has been talk about whether it is necessary to chit potatoes but it is too early to plant them and if left in their bags, seed potatoes will produce long sprouts that will break off at planting time anyway.

Chitting is simply placing the potatoes in a frost free place with indirect light and will produce short strong shoots, getting them away to a faster start. You can use egg cartons or seed trays to keep them in. Don't forget to label them so you don't get confused as to variety come planting time.

With main crop potatoes, reduce the number of shoots to three, or four on larger seed potatoes, so that they produce larger potatoes rather than masses of smaller ones.

Planting, sowing and cultivating 

If the weather permits, you can plant your onion and shallot sets. March is usually the right time to establish an asparagus bed if you are starting from crowns. Mid March should let you start planting those early potatoes you've had chitting and talking of root crops, you can plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers now.

Things to Sow

• Beetroot
• Broad Beans
• Early Peas (but they may do best started in a gutter in the greenhouse then slipped into a trench)
• Brussels sprouts – early varieties like Peer Gynt will be ready in September
• Kohl Rabi
• Leeks
• Lettuce
• Radish
• Parsnips
• Spinach Beet
• Early Turnips

Sow in Heat

Windowsill or a propagator in the greenhouse will come into use now to start off your tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and cucumbers.

Under Cloche

Summer cabbages and early cauliflowers, early carrots will get away best under a cloche. If you set your cloche up a week or two beforehand, it will warm up the soil so you will get even better results.

Many of the crops you can sow directly will also benefit from cloching, especially as you move northwards or started off in modules in a cool greenhouse or coldframe and then planted out later.

Fruit

There is still time to finish planting bare rooted fruit trees and bushes, especially raspberries and other cane fruits.

Early this month you can still prune apple and pear trees while they are still dormant. It's also time to prune gooseberries and currants. With currants shorten the sideshoots to just one bud and remove old stems from the centre of the bushes.

They'll benefit from some compost spread around the base as well.

Forcing rhubarb

Rhubarb can be forced for an early crop of the sweetest stalks. Just cover a crown or two with buckets or even an upturned large pot and insulate the outside with straw or compost for added heat. The stalks will grow in the dark.

The drawback is that this takes a lot out of the crown and it won't recover for a couple of years. The professional growers in the famous Rhubarb Triangle dig up their crowns and take them into huge dark warm sheds to produce forced rhubarb. Once the season ends these exhausted crowns are discarded as it will take them longer to recover than to grow new crowns.

General jobs

Check last year's potato bed for any volunteers (left over small potatoes) and remove them to avoid passing on disease problems and blight..

This year's potato bed will benefit from a good application of compost or rotted manure that can be forked in or rotovated in to get them away.

You can cover soil with dark plastic sheeting, fleece or cloches to warm it up for a couple of weeks before you start to sow and plant.

Have a good tidy up and finish those odd construction jobs, because you are going to be busier still later in the year.

© The National Vegetable Society and John Harrison