However, before rushing out with your seeds and dipper make sure your fledgling plants get the best possible head start against the competition.

Restore soil nutrients
Months of rain through autumn and winter will have washed away a large proportion of the soluble nutrients in your soil. As soon as trees, shrubs, roses and hedges surge into new growth their roots will be searching for food, and this is an ideal time to provide it. Sprinkle a general fertiliser, such as blood fish and bone, pelleted poultry manure or something similar, over the soil between established plants. Where possible, hoe into the soil's surface. Clumps of developing bulbs and perennials also benefit from feeding during spring. Later in April apply a high-nitrogen feed to all lawns, too

Vegetable beds
It's better to have a small vegetable patch that is well maintained then a large one that is overrun with weeds. An area two or three metres long by a metre wide is a good size for a novice gardener to start. As you get more experienced you can expand to suit, or if you find that other activities mean you now no longer have as much time for growing vegetables, you can comfortably reduce the number of beds.
Sunlight - position bed to allow sunlight to reach behind taller vegetables. By laying your beds north to south you allow full sunlight to strike the entire length of the beds. Of course, with limited garden space, it is not always possible to have a vegetable bed in full sunlight throughout the year. If part of your bed is shaded during the winter months, when the sun is low in the sky, it is best only used for summer crops such as salad vegetables
Remove any weeds, skimming them off with the spade if they are dense. Then dig over the area with a fork removing the remaining weed roots and large stones. To add the manure remove a trench of soil to one spade's depth at one end and move it to just beyond the far end. Dig the manure into the bottom of this trench, being careful not to bring the subsoil into the top layer, then turn the next row of spits on top of this. Repeat this along the area incorporating more manure and covering it with the turned over soil until the end when the soil from the first trench is used to fill the last. This is a process known as double-digging. If the ground has been cultivated before or is easily worked the double-digging can be performed during the clearing operations.

Green manure
Another use for fallow areas is to grow a green manure. This is an annual crop such as mustard (spring or summer sowing) or alfalfa (late summer or autumn sowing). It will prevent soil erosion, smother weeds and improve the soil structure. Before the plants mature they are cut, left to wilt and turned into the soil - roots and all, so that they are completely buried and will break down, returning nutrients to the soil. The soil structure is maintained better when it is being used, a plot left barren with nothing growing (even weeds) will become compacted and stagnant, growing roots keep it open.
Other green manures which can be grown in the winter are Corn Salad, Claytonia (Lamb's Lettuce) or Field Beans which do not have deep roots and are easily incorporated. Some of the seed which is sold for the purpose is used by commercial growers who use heavy machinery to incorporate the deeper roots.
If the soil is not of a chalky nature it will tend to become acid as the Calcium is leached out. Also the addition of compost and manure tends to lower the pH. It may require the addition of lime from time to time as most vegetables grow best when the soil pH is between 5.5 and 7.
Use ordinary lime (Calcium Carbonate) as it is less caustic than quicklime (Calcium Oxide). Choose a calm day marking out the area in one metre strips and sprinkle the lime evenly before digging it in. This is best done well before planting to avoid scorching of roots and should it not be applied at the same time as fertilizer or manure to avoid the loss of Nitrogen - a chemical reaction causes Ammonia to form which is gaseous and escapes to the atmosphere. Late autumn or winter is traditionally the time when liming is carried out.

Preparing a seed bed
The requirement for a seed bed is basically the same as for any vegetable bed, except that the soil need be only forked to a relatively shallow depth. If it is a new bed (i.e. never previously used to grow plants), the bed will need to be dug and prepared as with any new bed.
If plants have previously been grown on the bed, the preparation required is much less as the soil will have been broken up and most stones removed.
The biggest challenge to any gardener is to decide when the soil is suitable for working - not too dry and not too wet. This depends to some extent on the type of soil, a clay soil can turn from a sticky mass to hard as rock very quickly. Choosing the right time is one of the hardest choices, especially for new gardeners - it is largely a matter of experience with the particular soil type in the garden.
Assuming the seed bed is established, the likelihood is that there will be some seedlings in it when you come to prepare it for a new sowing, so any preparation will just apply to the area you require and care must be taken to avoid disturbing the existing seedlings. To prepare for a new sowing:
Lightly fork over, or hoe, the top 5 to 7.5cm (2 to 3 inches) of the bed. If the bed has not been used for some time, or the soil is very wet, it may be necessary to leave the soil for a day or two to dry out.
When the soil is dry enough for it to freely break up, rack the surface back and forth to give a suitable tilth - some clods may need a hit with the back of the rack or even breaking up by hand. Larger seeds generally benefit for a rather coarse tilth while fine seeds need a fine tilth.
As you rack back and forth, remove any stones, weeds or other vegetation. Keep racking to get the surface fairly level.

Using a seed bed
Once the seed bed is ready, choose a day when the soil is moist and little wind to plant your seeds.
Normally a 'drill' (or number of drills) is created on the surface of the seed bed - a drill is a shallow depression into the bottom of which seeds are sown. The drill can be formed either by pulling a hoe or a gardening trowel (backwards) through the surface of the prepared bed with the earth pulled to the sides, the depth required varies from seed to seedt. A line stretched above the soil before drills are made will help keep them straight.
The way the seeds are sown along the bottom of the drills will depend upon the seed been planted, typically one of three variations will be specified:
Very thinly - say 2.5cm (1 inch) between seeds.
Thinly - say 1.2cm (½ inch) between seeds.
At stations - a number of seeds together at given spacing.
Check on the seed packet to determine the appropriate spacing for particular vegetables. Using more seeds than necessary will just waste seeds and cause extra thinning later on.
Once the seeds have been sown, they are normally covered by pulling the back of a rack or hoe over the surface of the bed to fill the drills.
Identify the drill and the seeds sown by putting in a short stick at each end of each drill and attaching a waterproof label with the name of the plant marked on it.
Stretching a line between the end sticks above each drill will help keep birds off the seeds and young seedlings.


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