PRICKING OUT & POTTING UP

This month Martin Fish offers practical advice and top tips for two essential gardening tasks

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Growing your own vegetable plants from seed is a cost-effective way to get a wide range of tasty edibles. It allows you to grow the varieties that you can't buy as plants from garden centres and it’s also very satisfying to grow your own.

Some vegetables can be sown directly into the ground but many are started off in containers and grown on until large enough to plant out. This gives the young veg plants a head start and it means you have strong plants that will, hopefully, establish faster when planted into the garden.

When seed is sown into pots or seed trays of compost the seedlings need to be transplanted for growing on to prevent overcrowding and to give them more space to grow. This process is known as pricking out and if done correctly, when the seedlings are small, they will soon make new leaf and root growth.