A key part of growing for show is timing, you want your produce to be at its best on show day, but for most of us, the temperamental nature of the weather will be a bigger factor than all of our best laid plans.  As we only show at one small local affair, we focus more on growing to eat and then hoping that if we do this well that there will also be stuff ready to show.  This approach means that with January in the rear view mirror and the days definitely getting longer there is plenty to be getting on with to be ready for spring.  There is still likely to be plenty of cold weather around for the next few weeks, so a lot of activity will be indoors, for those lucky enough to have facilities like a heated greenhouse, you can really get going.

A heated propagator is a great way to kick start seeds and these are available in all sorts of shapes and sizes to suit different budgets and the space available.  We have one that is about seed tray size that we use when we need a fair bit of space, for example it will take a full root trainer kit loaded with sweet corn, but we love the versatility of the slimmer modular ones that fit neatly on a window sill and the separate trays allow us to bring on a reasonable number of a wide variety of plants.

“Super 7″ propagator

February is an important sowing month for us, with many of the greenhouse crops starting now. Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers will all be sown before the end of the month. With unheated greenhouses we don’t plant out until early May so this does mean that there are some fairly hefty seedlings on window ledges by Easter.

For a September show it might be better to sow tomatoes a bit later so that they are at their cropping peak then, but from an eating perspective the earlier they are fruiting the greater the chance of a crop in a bad blight year.  We have found that aubergines need a long growing period, not to mention a hand from the weather, to fruit successfully in our area, so the bigger the plants that go out, the better our chances of a crop.  Similarly to ripen sweet peppers we also reckon that we’re going to need quite mature plants by planting out time.  with a bit of luck sweet and chilli peppers will both be at their peak by September for the Cookham show.

Chilli Peppers in September

Outdoors it is a good time for ground preparation. Increasingly more and more fruit and vegetable growers are moving towards no dig and February is a great month for mulching your beds with bulky organic matter as there should be plenty of moisture in the ground from winter rains, so you will be sealing it in ready for planting out later.

If you haven’t pruned fruit trees and bushes yet, make sure that you do this before growth re-starts, but hold off on stone fruits like cherries and plums until the summer.