Key gardening jobs for Spring

Now may not seem the best time to be in your garden but pull on your wellies and get out there - lift the winter blues and get that spring and summer colour on the go. If you would like to grow vegetables and salad plants, early Spring is the perfect time to get things started for fresh flavours into summer.

Key gardening jobs for Spring

1) Sow carrots, parsnips and bulb onions under cloches. Source seeds for salad leaves and start them off under glass.
2) Chit potato tubers
3) Protect blossom on apricots, nectarines, apples, pears and peaches
4) Net crops and fruit bushes especially raspberries and blackcurrants to keep the birds off
5) Order asparagus and other vegetable seeds
6) Divide bulbs such as snowdrops once they've stopped flowering
7) Prune Wisteria to ensure late spring floral displays
8) Renovate overgrown deciduous hedges
9) Prune conservatory climbers
10) Sterilise pots and trays ready for seed sowing

Vegetable plant offers for Tiscali members

Designing your garden

Now is the best time of year to put your garden design ideas on paper and cost them out.

If you want to plant veg start by turning the soil on your chosen patch of ground in preparation for planting and get rid of stones, old roots or spent tubers.

Once you've done this, work out what you want to grow. Make a list of the fruit and vegetables you like to eat. Easy vegetables to grow include salads, shallots, courgettes, potatoes, cabbage, culinary herbs or sweetcorn.

For more garden design ideas and advice we recommend taking a look at the Royal Horticultural Society website. For advice on conservation, biodiversity and organic gardening see the Royal Horticultural Society's advice pages.

Buy vegetables to plant

Asparagus
Cabbage and Calebrese
Courgettes
The Vegetable Collection
Baby New Potatoes
Tomatoes