January is too cold for much real gardening, which makes it the perfect time for the kind that happens at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, a notebook and last year's seed packets spread out in front of you.
Learn from last year
Before you plan anything, think back over the past season. What did you grow too much of, what ran out, what failed and what did the family actually eat? There is no sense devoting a whole bed to a vegetable nobody likes.
Sketch the beds and rotate
Draw the plot to scale and pencil in what goes where. Moving crops around year to year keeps the soil healthy and pests guessing.
- Keep the potato family, the cabbage family and the legumes on the move.
- Follow hungry crops with soil-building beans and peas.
- Leave room for a few flowers to pull in the pollinators.
Order seeds early
Go through what you have, test old seed for viability and order the gaps now while the new catalogues are full. Popular varieties sell out by February, and ordering early spreads the cost rather than facing one big bill in spring.
Make a sowing timetable
Finally, work out when each crop needs sowing and write it on a simple month-by-month list. A plan on paper turns the spring rush, when everything seems to need doing at once, into a calm series of jobs you can actually keep up with.