Timely Gardening tips:Week seventh continued:

If the weather is right in your area, this is the right time to sow your main broad bean crop. Try and grow a heavy cropping variety like Organic Variety* The Broad Windsor was listed in 1863. This reliable glossy green pods contain 5-7 oblong, flat, beans. The broad bean is the hardiest of the beans and can be sown in the spring, survive the winter frosts, and be harvested in early summer. All parts of the fava plant are edible. The seeds are high in protein, vitamins, and minerals, and have been a cornerstone of human nutrition for thousands of years. The beans may be eaten fresh and properly dried beans will keep for three years. Leaves of the fava plant can be preparing similarly to spinach. This crop must be given fairly good soil. Sow the seeds in lines two feet apart and place them two inches below the surface. Because my plot is flooded at the moment I am sowing mine in pots in my glasshouse on  my growing bench.

Buy your Fava Bean - Broad Windsor Organic from amazon now.

If you are growing under a cold frame it is a good idea to remove the ‘lights’ during any sunny February day. This helps the plants by avoiding stale or damp air building up. Also remove any decaying foliage, lightly stir the soil between the plants with a hoe and give a dusting of old soot. 

Nectarines,and peaches as well as cherries all fruit on young wood, so now is a good time to remove as much of last years old fruiting wood as you can. Replace it by tying in young growths at full length. Make sure that they are not thicker than one and a half inches apart.

This is the work that I did last year (2013 ) in February after the winter floods. Each bed took me four hours and eight wheel-borrows of compost to raise them 23 inches of the ground.

Those same beds February 2014.You see that they are just out of the water. When the floods have gone down I must add more compost to get them more out of the floods.There is kale,cabbage,celery,beetroot,turnips and rhubarb growing them at the moment.A the bottom of my plot I have a small glasshouse. I am sowing lettuce,carrots and spring onions in containers at the moment.

Right now the UK is being hit by 108 mile an hour winds and heavy rain. More rain is expected tomorrow. I must rethink my growing systems because right now and for the next month I have no chance of growing in the soil.