Ruud Kleinpaste: Beginning to grow food as spring nears

Author: Ruud Kleinpaste ,
Publish Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026, 11:59am

Follow the podcast on

Honestly our winter has been rather strange: crazy winds and cold weeks, some flowering trees and late native trees. It sometimes feels like spring, but don’t be fooled for another four weeks – mistakes can be made!

Spring, by the way, starts 23rd of September at 12:05pm (at the equinox ;-)).

Yet slowly —very slowly— the soil starts to warm up a bit and that is a condition that requires us to plant our new crops and ornamentals.

A rather quick way to get new crops going is by purchasing plants you’d love to have in the veggie garden and eat as soon as they are ready: broad beans, strawberries, spring onions, cauliflowers, lettuces, carrots, spinach, etc.

Start that now, but cover them when you expect a nasty frost.

Soils are still quite moist and that is a positive reason to plant anything that lives long: shrubs, trees, fruit-bearing vines, and flowering perennial beauties. The reason is the planted trees/shrub etc will not need to “sulk” for a long time – they’ll 'wake up' from their winter slumber relatively quickly to start the growth.

And there’s little need to water these new plants. The same arguments will go for your food crops.

A few things to start organising:

For those of you that like “new potatoes” for Christmas, start sorting your plants so you can begin chitting and plant your spuds as seed potatoes. Jersey Bennes and such early varieties are probably the best to use before Christmas.

That’s all I do this year, so I don’t play Russian roulette with solanum pests such as Psyllids later in the season (AND I WANT TO PROTECT MY MAIN TUNNELHOUSE CROP: TOMATOES!).

And that brings me to organising my Tomato varieties: get the Kings Seeds Catalogue!

Mixed cherry tomatoes and Artisan Blush