Dig this.

Byline: By Peter Horrocks

It's not easy to control weeds among the onions, but I sawed half a blade off a hoe many years ago and the remaining bit hooks nicely round the back as you move along the row. Onions don't like competition so make sure you keep the weeds down. I'm starting off more winter vegetables this week, it's a bit of a bind having to look so far ahead, but if you don't get the sowing right, it's bye bye crop for the winter. Swede seeds I used to sow straight into the ground and thin out the resulting seedlings later. What happened most years was that it was too dry for the seeds to germinate evenly in the ground, so I had to resort to transplanting some to fill in the gaps. Then, last year, I discovered module sowing! That's using those plastic trays with loads of small cells in them and sowing individual seeds in each module. It can be a bit of a faff on, but with the trays of seeds in the greenhouse

keeping warm and getting a regular drop of water, the results are almost 100% germination, and when the seedlings are about two inches high, they can be lifted with their individual root ball cleanly from the cell and transplanted into nice evenly spaced rows without any root disturbance.

First pickings last week of garden peas, summer turnips and runner beans, all sown indoors in March and transplanted later. This is when the first taste of the fresh vegetables makes all that early season's effort seem worthwhile. The last of the spring sown leaf beet has seeded and a further successional sowing straight into the ground will ensure a crop for the autumn.