Starting your own veg patch for food during the coronavirus crisis

If the events surrounding the coronavirus have made you start thinking about growing your own food, now (March) is a great time to start - even if only by ordering the seeds online.

Not all seeds can be sown outside yet in the UK, but some can go straight in the ground in March and some can be started under glass or indoors and anyway, this is a great time to start digging and clearing beds (or digging them out of your lawn), so you're ready to sow your seeds when the time does come.

I started sowing my very first seeds of the year indoors in January. This is because peppers, chillies and aubergines take a very long time to grow. Mine have had since January and are still pretty small (because that's how those plants work), but big enough that I've started (but not finished) the process of pricking them out and transferring them to less crowded pots.

Actually, it's not yet too late for peppers, chillies and aubergines, though, especially if you're planning on growing them indoors on a sunny windowsill for their whole lives (if your windowsill doesn't get a lot of sun, don't bother, none of these plants will grow successfully without a huge amount of sun). Simply sow some seeds into compost in a pot. If you don't have a proper plant pot, you can use an empty, clean yogurt pot, ideally with a hole made in the bottom to let water drain out. Depending on the yogurt pot, you might be able to do that with scissors.
My experience of chillies, peppers and aubergines is that they're a lot of work and I don't get a decent yield of either peppers or aubergines, so these might not be the ideal veg if you only have limited space. On the other hand, I've had good yields of chillies, so if you like your food hot and have space on a sunny windowsill, this might be the plant for you. If it is, order the seeds and sow them as soon as possible. If you don't have compost, soil from your garden might well work, providing you use some fertiliser when the plants start growing.
I've also recently sown tomatoes in my indoor pots. This is an excellent time of year to sow tomatoes. I particularly recommend the Moneymaker tomato because it produces a big crop, is tasty, does well both in a greenhouse and outdoors in the UK, is pretty resilient to problems and its tomatoes are delicious eaten raw or used in cooking.
I've also sown beans, kale, kohlrabi and lettuce in my greenhouse already.

These are out in my unheated greenhouse for two reasons: Firstly, it gives the plants a level of heat comparable to a month or two later in the year, encouraging them to sprout earlier and to grow faster. Secondly, being in the greenhouse protects them from slugs and snails. I get a lot of trouble with slugs and snails in my garden and growing plants in pots, particularly in a greenhouse or under glass (=under a cold frame or cloche), until they get a few leaves and the leaves toughen up tends to help them survive. If you don't have a greenhouse, an unheated (or very badly heated) conservatory would work. I don't think beans would be very happy in central heating indoors, though, as they're plants that grow well in colder climates and the heat of being indoors may be too much for them.
You can sow some kinds of beans (for instance broad beans) directly outside already. Others need to wait until April. It took me several years of practice to successfully grow broad beans, so they're probably not ideal for the novice gardener. I've had a much easier time with runner beans, I grow one called Butler, and also with a French climbing bean called cosse violette. You will need bamboo canes to grow these - although you could also grow them up a garden arch and might get away with growing them up other tall things in the garden.

My kale, kohlrabi and lettuce seeds aren't technically meant to be started off under glass, but I had so many problems with slugs last year I ended up having to start the kale and kohlrabi off in pots anyway, so I decided to see if the greenhouse would give them an extra boost and I applied the same thinking to the lettuce. Lettuce is a good vegetable to grow because it grows very fast. In areas with a lot of slugs, you might have problems and need to find ways to deal with the slugs, but worst case scenario, you can grow it in a pot or two on your windowsill like those cut-and-come-again lettuces the supermarkets sell.
I have also cleared out the garden so that I can start sowing directly in the ground.

Before

After

From the photos you can barely tell that I've mown the lawn and hoed several of the beds, but in real life it makes a noticeable difference. The kale (the tall purple plant at the front) is still there because it is just flowering now and I'm thinking of collecting the seeds. The purple sprouting broccoli (the big green bush-like plant in the centre of the pictures) is still there because it's still giving me broccoli.
I don't have many seeds that want to be sown directly in the ground right now.

Purple sprouting broccoli that has been cut, which has encouraged new sprouts

So far I've sown some purple sprouting broccoli (a great, very reliable plant, but it won't produce any broccoli until February or March next year), some radishes (also very reliable and easy to grow and ready in just a few weeks), some turnips (not reliable, I've had a lot of difficulty with them over the years, so possibly not for the beginner, although you may get lucky and buy a better variety than me and/or plant it in just the right location) and some pak choi (I've no idea how it grows, this is my first year, it's a low FODMAP choice).

A lot of other vegetable seeds need sowing in April. I particularly recommend Boltardy beetroots, carrots (ideally one resistant to carrot fly) and onion sets (=mini onion bulbs) that need planting in spring (autumn planted ones are great too, but it's too late now for those if you haven't already planted them).

I will also be planting squashes and sweet corn in pots indoors in April. March is too early to start them. I particularly recommend the sweet corn variety Incredible F1 and the squash variety Winter Squash Sweet Dumpling. Both are easy to grow and taste great. Be warned, though, squashes take a lot of space and the winter ones aren't ready until September or October. They do, however, mainly store well.

Chard in March (planted the previous year)

I also recommend (Swiss) chard, providing you like the taste of spinach. It tastes like spinach, is easy to grow, doesn't seem to suffer from many pests or diseases (at least not in my garden), can be eaten raw or cooked and can be picked for months and months - just take off the leaves you need and leave the rest of the plant growing. My biggest problem with it is that I'm not really much of a fan of the flavour of spinach, so I tend to avoid it when there's anything else available at all.

I won't be growing courgettes myself this year, but I do recommend them. You also need to start them off indoors in April and they take up a fair amount of space, but you will get an awful lot of them. Two plants is generally easily enough for a family of four.

Mangetout have worked out fairly well for me in the past, although my crop is often small and short-lived.

If you can get hold of them, I also recommend planting autumn-fruiting raspberries. You might not get a lot the first year, but mine spread like weeds, produce a lot of fruit and take almost no maintenance.

I also recommend planting mint in a large pot if you like mint tea. Don't put it straight in the ground, it'll try and take your whole garden over.

I don't grow potatoes, because I've heard slugs love them and we have a major slug and snail problem here, but if you'd like to try them, you can find instructions on planting them here (it's slightly more complicated than planting other veg, but not hard once you know what you're doing).

Things I don't recommend
I don't recommend normal broccoli (calabrese). Mine is always entirely consumed by caterpillars. I've also had difficulty with cabbage, although I'll be giving red cabbage a go this year, just in case that's any better. I'm wary about turnips, although I do keep trying. Peas tend not to work out well for me, as they usually get infested with pea moths before I get even a single portion-sized harvest.  Leeks are usually something of a disaster for me. I've had slightly better luck with the ones I planted in amongst carrots and calendula in 2019, but usually they just end up full of allium miners (a bug) or fail to reach a decent size or both. Even planting them with the other strong smelling plants didn't entirely fool the allium miners and some got into most of my leeks.

If you are planning to grow food this year only, you don't need to worry about crop rotation. But if you are planning to grow veg for more than one year in a row, then crop rotation is something you need to think about when planning your planting. More information about how to do this is available here.