want to start with growing vegetables but do not know what to do or where to start

Hi Sarahandkevin, nice to see you back again..
Well sounds a good idea to me.. Prepare the soil by digging it over now. Then rake it down to a fine tilth ready for planting, removing any largee stones. Try to not to stand on the ground when working as it compacts the soil structure - especially on heavy, clay. ( not sure what soil you have there)
I always use short scaffold planks to stand & walk on when planting and preparing. You can also warm the soil artificially, fleece, polythene, using plastic or glass cloches, to get an earlier start..
Now March has arrived you can start with broad beans seeds or plants, onion and shallot sets, early peas and perpetual spinach.
However First Early potatoes should wait until the end of March. Even then you will have to earth these up, or cover the tops with soil, to protect them from late frost.

Once the soil warms up in April, sow carrots, parsnips, spinach, lettuce and beetroot. They will germinate best in warmer temperatures of around 12C. Frost-tender runner beans, French beans, tomatoes, peppers and aubergines demand even higher temperatures - so leave those until mid-May.

Choose flavourful, tried and tested varieties. Also look out for RHS award winners shown by the letters AGM - or by a trophy logo on the packets.

Growing your own vegetables is a very green thing to do. You can grow them organically, they taste delicious and, picked fresh, they are more nutritious as well.

Go for crops that you enjoy eating and ones where thereâ??s a real difference in quality from shop-bought. If space is short and thereâ??s only room for one thing opt for a space-saving tripod of climbing beans.
Plant a mixture of Climbing French and Runner beans on the same wigwam, alternating three seeds per cane of each variety, in mid-May.
Runners love cooler summers and French beans do best in hot summers, so you are hedging your bets. If nothing else climbing beens are decorative when in flower..!! :dh::D

Plant leaf lettuces like â??Salad Bowlâ?? (Mr Fothergillâ??s) in and around your tripod of beans. Sow the seeds in a tray, prick out and then transplant. The lettuces will act as decoy plants for slugs and help to protect the growing points of climbing beans. Dwarf French beans are equally good - but they take up more ground space.

Two courgette plants could provide you with up to 60 courgettes from June until October. The smooth, dark-green â??El Grecoâ?? and the paler, nutty-flavoured Italian variety â??Romanesqueâ?? are both excellent. If thereâ??s slightly more room plant a winter squash. The orange-skinned, pumpkin-like â??Sunshineâ?? is one of the best.

Early potatoes are full of flavour and they generally avoid disease because theyâ??re out of the ground by late July, long before blight and scab usually appear. Earlies can be grown in containers as well as in the ground. â??Foremostâ?? is a favourite waxy variety.Along with â?? Charlotteâ?? - a slightly later waxy variety.

Buy tubers after Christmas and then place on a cool, light window sill and allow the potatoes to sprout or â??chitâ??. Harvest fresh after 12 - 14 weeks , as and when you need them. Earlies will not store.

Leafy crops like iron-rich spinach are also excellent. If room grow a root crop. Beetroot is easy and heavy yielding.. Carrots are also deliciously nuttyflavour. Try to sow seeds thinly and remember, the more colourful the crop the more antioxidants.



Containerise peppers, chillies, aubergines and tomatoes. Buy you plants at Easter, when the garden centres get them in, and put them into large pots filled with John Innes no 3. Keep them somewhere frost free until mid-May (against a warm wall will do) and then place in sun, standing the pots in saucers in dry weather. Feed with a high potash tomato food every two weeks once the flowers begin to set. You should get a good crop.. Just feed & waterugularly & you should be fine.. So that is about it for me for the moment.. :dh::D

 

:dh: Hi Luido, I'm so sorry looks like I missed your thread, but you have had some super answers I see..
:thumb: Go with Aaron about the kits etc that you see in Wilkos.. I would go to your local garden centre & buy some seeds, pots, a propagator that holds about 12. 3"pots & seed compost & start some off..:thumb: