• As long as not frozen or waterlogged, continue digging over beds.
• Spread compost or well rotted manure as required.
• Sort out your seeds, throwing away empty, open/water damaged or out-of-date packets.
• Plan crop rotation for the growing season to ensure each type of crop is planted in a different bed to previous years.
• Continue to check over stored crops in particular apples.

Vegetables

• You can plant early potatoes in large pots and kept in a greenhouse or polytunnel. Although no extra heat is required, a little heating will certainly speed things up.
• Feed and mulch asparagus if you have not already done so in the autumn.
• Ensure netting is in place over brassicas, such as kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbages, to protect from pigeons
• If grown, seakale can now be forced, covering crowns with.

Flowers

• Continue to dead-head winter bedding.
• Sow sweet peas if you have not done so in autumn.

Fruit

• Rhubarb can start to be forced now, by covering crowns under large pots, buckets or proper forcing pots if available, then fresh manure heaped around to provide heat
• Finish all pruning of fruit trees this month at the latest. Ensure all trained fruit such as fans, cordons, espaliers etc are well tied in.
• Finish pruning gooseberries and currant bushes.  If the month is mild, the earliest buds may begin to swell on gooseberries, plums etc. These may require protection from birds.
• Check all stakes, wires and ties on fruit trees and bushes, replace any worn or broken items.

Greenhouse

• Open when mild to air out
• Tidy, if not already done