For those of us who like to grow a little of our food, January is the month of sitting on our hands and glumly waiting for it to finish. But with February comes a different mood entirely and the tingle of anticipation.
It all starts with the seed orders. Perhaps in no other field of gardening does success depend so heavily on the careful selection of the very best, most productive, vigorous, resilient, flavoursome, disease-resistant varieties. Get it right when it comes to your choice of seed potatoes, for example, and not only do you greatly improve the plants’ chances of avoiding blight but the flavour of your bountiful home-grown crop will be without compare. Choose the right variety of onion and you’ll significantly reduce its chances of bolting. Pick a great variety of garden pea and you can expect high yields and an excellent flavour. Similarly, choose smartly and your home-grown runner beans will be stringless, your French beans succulent, your lettuce sweet, your beetroot tender and tasty, your parsnips canker-free and your tomatoes sweet and juicy.
Last but not least, choose your supplier carefully. The best can be relied upon to offer fresh, high-quality, carefully stored and well-packaged seed sourced from growers who are scrupulous about maintaining standards as regards weeding out rogues and preserving the particular qualities of the variety. With all this in mind, here’s a handy little cheat’s guide to getting it right.
Potatoes: The race to stay in advance of the ever-growing threat of potato blight has resulted in the introduction of a flurry of excellent new, high-yielding, blight-resistant varieties in recent years. Examples include: Alouette, a very tasty second-early, yellow-fleshed, red-skinned variety; Vitabella, a delicious, fast-growing, yellow-fleshed, second-early/maincrop potato; Kelly, a new, floury maincrop variety suitable for storage; Vitanoire, a new early, flavoursome potato with deep purple skin and flesh.
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Onions: Avoid the red-skinned varieties which are more inclined to bolt in variable weather conditions and concentrate on classic white and golden-skinned varieties known for their reliability. Examples include Sturon which is high-yielding as well as good in storage and Globo, another excellent, high-yielding, flavoursome, white-skinned onion. Rather than buying them as baby onion sets which are more expensive and increase the risk of accidentally introducing destructive, persistent diseases such as onion white rot into your garden or allotment, many gardeners now prefer to raise their onions from seed sown at this time of year under cover. Seed-raised onions are also less likely to bolt.
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Beetroot: Go for Pablo, a great all-rounder variety suitable for harvesting as baby beet as well as for storage later in the season. Full of flavour and sweetness, this globe-type beetroot is also reliably high-yielding.
Tomatoes: They might be mouth-wateringly delicious but any of the big beefsteak varieties are always going to be a gamble in our cool, variable Irish climate and often brief, sun-starved summers which limits these heat-loving crops’ chances of properly ripening in time. A much safer bet is the smaller cherry-type kinds which are much more reliably productive in less-than-ideal growing conditions. Standout varieties include the delicious, disease-resistant, ultra-productive, yellow-skinned Sungold, which is famed for the intense sweetness, juiciness and flavour of its bright yellow fruits. Other outstanding varieties include Honeycomb (sweet, red, large cherry type), Sakura (sweet red cherry type), Gardeners Delight which is a classic large cherry tomato noted for its sweetness and productivity and Sweet Aperitif, which produces huge yields of scarlet fruits.
Lettuce: Do you know your butterhead from your romaine, your cos from your oakleaf? Even seasoned kitchen gardeners can feel bewildered by the huge range available as seed. But all of the following are standout varieties prized for their reliability, ease of cultivation, flavour and texture: All Year Round is a superb butterhead suitable for sowing February to (under cover) August with crisp green leaves; Marvel of All Seasons, another classic butterhead type with attractively crinkled, wine-stained, flavoursome leaves; Clarion, an outstandingly vigorous, disease-resistant butterhead lettuce; Navara, a versatile red oakleaf-type lettuce suitable for growing under cover as well as outdoors; Amaze, a little gem-type lettuce with tender, sweet yellow hearts.
Carrots: Sweet, delicious and productive with a lovely crunch, Early Nantes 2 remains the go-to variety. Other standouts include: Maestro, a maincrop Nantes-type with exceptionally good pest and disease resistance; Autumn King, a great all-rounder suitable for heavier soils; and Flakkee for a late-cropping tasty variety that stores well.
Parsnips: Javelin is the must-grow variety, prized for its good pest and disease resistance as well as its really sweet, tasty flesh. Also worth growing is the vigorous, flavoursome Gladiator which has good resistance to canker and early-cropping Vulcan.
Peas: For podding peas, it’s hard to beat the heavy-cropping, mildew-resistant, very delicious Hurst Greenshaft. Others to put on the list include the Victorian variety Alderman, a tall, heavy-cropping variety with a great flavour. For a mangetout-type, the classic is Oregon Sweet Pod, which is prized for its delicious, tender pods. For a sugersnap, go for the high-yielding, delicious Delikett.
Beans: Cobra is one of the best varieties of climbing French bean out there, producing large quantities of tasty, succulent beans over a long period. Outstanding dwarf varieties include the always-reliable Delinel and the delicious, stringless Safari. For broad beans, high-yielding Super Aquadulce is the one to choose for spring sowing. For runner beans, seek out the relatively new, self-pollinating variety Firestorm, which is winning lots of plaudits for its productivity even in poor growing seasons as well as its flavour and tenderness.
Leeks: If you have room for just one variety, then go for a hardy leek suitable for overwintering. Heavy-yielding, long-lasting and very flavoursome with good rust resistance, Porbella is hard to beat.
- Recommended specialist Irish vegetable seed and seed potato suppliers include greenvegetableseeds.com; brownenvelopeseeds.com (organically grown, open-pollinated seeds); seedaholic.com; mrmiddleton.com; theorganiccentre.ie; giy.ie; fruithillfarm.com; irishseedsavers.ie (organic, open-pollinated seed) and mrmiddleton.com
This Week
Sow the seed of onions into modular trays under cover (see above) and with a bottom heat of 18 degrees. Remove from heat once germination takes place but keep the young seedlings under cover until late April. These can then be planted out into the garden after being hardened off.
Sow seed of sweet pea. Start by chitting the seed by placing it on some damp kitchen paper in a clear sealed container in a cool, bright room indoors. Once they start to shoot, very gently sow them shallowly into deep root trainers filled with a good quality seed compost and place them in a bright, cool, frost-free position to grow on. Keep them regularly watered before planting out in late March/early April.
Dates for Your Diary
Saturday, February 22nd, Crowne Plaza Dublin Airport Hotel Conference Centre, Northwood Park, Santry, Dublin D09 X9X2, Building Resilient Landscapes for a Changing Climate, the GLDA’s 2025 seminar with guest speakers Henrik Sjöman, Wendy Allen, Charlotte Hitchmough, Adam Whitbourn and Ane Marie Powell, see glda.ie for booking details.
