Let’s face it: January is a bit crap.

It’s dark by 4.30pm, you’re bumbling about in four layers of clothing looking like the Michelin man, and even when the rain stops for long enough to venture outside everything is sodden and you come in soaked to the skin and covered in mud.

Even Biggles and Oakley don’t much fancy it at the moment, and I don’t blame them – nor do I.

I have managed a little hedging this week, and I’ve made some progress on fixing the rabbit fences round my veg patch – old age has caught up with most of the posts so I’ve been slowly replacing them and repairing holes.

But this is not a time to be outside. So instead I have been mostly indoors, dreaming up another wonderful veg-growing year.✓

Do you plan out your veg patch and what you’ll be growing this year? True, it’s more fun to do it haphazardly, as the mood takes you – but you’ll get a steadier supply of the right kind of veg, and in larger quantities if you take the chance, while there’s a lull in proceedings, to work out what you want to do this year and generally get everything ready.

To read more click here