Beginners:
To have your own garden is a wonderful thing. A small piece of soil in a bright, sunny place will give you hours of pleasure, mostly because it will do just what you ask of it. With the care you give it, you will be very happy when you see your little seeds come up as plants. It won’t take much work or time to get the soil ready.

If there are any weeds, pull them up and put them in the wheelbarrow for the compost heap. On a dry day, toss up the soil with a fork and leave it to dry for a day or two. Then shake on a thin layer of fine sand and with your fork shake it all up together. In a day, you will be surprised at how the sand lightens and dries the bed of soil, ready for seed sowing.

Things you can try planting at this time of year (April - May):
Shallots, Onions, Scallions, Carrots, Parsley, Chives, Lettuce, Garlic, French-Marigolds, Cabbage and Night-Scented Stock.

You could sow the flower seeds around three edges of your patch. The Marigolds may help keep away some pests and the Stock will smell really lovely! Carrots and Parsley are related and they need to be planted in buckets or some sort of container above ground level. That way the Carrot-Fly won’t eat them. (Make sure you add some garden worms to the buckets. They are very good for the soil). Onions like firm soil, so stamp up and down on the ground to make it firm or bash it with a spade, then make a ‘drill’ which is a long, slim, channel indented into the soil - but not very deep. Sprinkle the onion seeds into that and cover with your prepared soil. Put in short drills of Scallions, shallots and garlic. They taste delicious in cooking and like onions and chives, are very good for you and easy to grow. Perhaps a friend’s mother has a clump of chives she can split and give you or you can buy them at the plant nursery. They will happily grow into a bigger clump through the year and you can snip off the tender stalks as you need them and the herb keeps growing. Sometimes your local hardware store also sells young cabbage plants and a variety of seeds. You can sow some of your lettuce seeds now and keep sowing some through the Summer and you will have fresh, delicious lettuce for all the family to share, for months ahead. Everyone will admire your hard work and they will be certain yours is the best-tasting crop anyone has ever tasted!