Even in the coldest months, there are some vegetables that can be planted, as Gillian Vine explains.
Winter is when gardeners like to sit in front of the fire studying seed catalogues, but when the weather permits, it is also the time to get out and plant or sow some tough vegetables.
Traditionally planted on the shortest day, June 21, garlic cloves are pressed into the ground with the tops just above the soil.
Plants then grow slowly and although tradition dictates harvesting on the longest day, they are better left until late summer, when the tops turn yellow and the garlic can be lifted and heads stored in a warm, dry spot.
Like other members of the onion family, garlic likes a light soil that has been well-manured and limed.
Cloves of named varieties, such as Printanor, can be bought at garden centres but many gardeners save their own or buy heads of garlic at farmers' markets then break them into cloves to plant.
Garlic seed is sometimes available and is sown in autumn or spring.
Spring is also the time to sow rhubarb seed, but a faster way to get a crop is to buy plants now and plant them in very rich soil.
Because rhubarb is a perennial, choose a spot where it can grow undisturbed for several years, and be really heavy-handed with animal manure to ensure long, thick, tender stalks.
Divide plants every three or four years.
Asparagus plants will last for 15 years or longer, the stems getting better each season.
Like rhubarb, asparagus can be grown from seed, but two-year-old plants (crowns) planted over winter enable a few spears to be picked the following year.
The third perennial, the globe artichoke, has fat heads of overlapping scales opening to a thistle-like flower.
Before they open, the bases of the scales (bracts) are eaten, then the furry choke is scraped away to reveal the best part, the sweet-flavoured base.
Offshoots from the base of globe artichokes are put in the ground in late winter or spring, or plants are grown from spring-sown seed.
In areas that have heavy frosts, cover plants with pea straw in winter.
Jerusalem artichokes are not related to the globe type nor the rarely seen Chinese artichoke.
Like potatoes, the tiniest piece of Jerusalem artichoke tuber left in the ground will pop up in spring, so diligence when lifting the crop avoids a mass of volunteers next season.
They have nothing to do with Jerusalem, either, and the word may be a corruption of the Italian girasole, meaning sunflower, as these knobbly root veges are North American members of the sunflower tribe, which explains their height of up to 3m and the pretty yellow flowers in late summer.
Very hardy and tolerant of poor soils, Jerusalem artichoke tubers are rarely available from garden centres, so buy a few good-sized ones from the supermarket and pop them in a spare corner.
They are harvested in late autumn when the tops die down - dig as needed, as they lose crispness out of the ground - and are good roasted or in soup.
