Val Bourne has a garden chock-full of food for the winter months, and you can too if you sow wisely

You have almost certainly been weighed down by the arrival of lots of seed catalogues bumping on to the doormat and they will all be extolling the virtues of summer fare such as tomatoes, peppers, chillies, beans and lettuce.

However the most useful vegetables of all are those that provide food in late autumn and winter, because these stay in the ground and supply months of need — saving you money when vegetables are at their most expensive.

When my whole family come to Sunday lunch — and there are nine of us — we only have to buy the meat. The rest of the food comes from the garden. Leeks, parsnips, cabbages (or Brussels sprouts or kale) are all picked on the day. Potatoes, winter squash, onions and shallots come out of store and herbs can be picked straight from the garden because we cloche our parsley. Thyme and sage survive — if a little ragged. Frozen soft fruit, such as blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries, get cooked together for pudding.

It’s not just about saving money though. When you grow your own you can eat vitamin-rich food picked very fresh.

If you’ve got room, create your own winter pantry. I use 8ft by 4ft beds because these blocks are easier to work: you can reach into them without walking on the soil. They are easy to rotate and generally the three-year order goes: potatoes, followed by legumes, onions and roots, followed by brassicas. The idea is that the brassicas benefit from the extra nitrogen fixed into the soil by the leguminous plants. However, the general idea is to avoid problems with pests and diseases.

If you have only room for one winter vegetable, opt for the handsome Black Tuscan kale ‘Cavolo Nero’, because this is very hardy despite its Italian name. You can also pick the leaves from autumn onwards and it tastes good and does you good. Start with a packet of seeds and, because they are easy to handle, you can sow one seed (or perhaps two) into each space in modular trays.

Mid-spring is fine for sowing and my plants are raised under unheated glass, before being placed outside to harden off. The trick with all brassicas is get them into the ground when the roots fill the modules, usually in early May. If they stall and become root-bound they never recover. Dig the hole, fill it with water and plonk the plant in quickly and cover with soil equally quickly. This ancient ‘puddling in’ technique pulls the soil right down into the roots. Space 15 inches (37cm) apart or a little more for Brussels sprouts.

Add a nitrogen-rich feed — powdered chicken manure sold as 6X is easy to apply. Net immediately, for cabbage white butterflies will lay their eggs as you soon as you blink. Water in the first few weeks, but after that most brassicas — plants of light coastal soil — happily grow away. Cauliflowers are the exception: they need feeding like a newly-born baby. I’m afraid I buy mine!

In mid-March you can also sow Brussels sprouts, summer and autumn cabbage, purple sprouting and other types of kale, including curly kale. If you are considering the new flower sprout (sold as ‘Petit Posy’), wait for warmer weather. It’s a poor germinator in March. This kale x Brussels sprout cross is very hardy and tastes more like spring greens.

By mid-March you can also sow leeks and the British-bred F1 variety ‘Oarsman’ is terrific. Plant when they are like slender pencils. The technique is to drop them in a ready-made hole. Fill the hole with water so it pulls the leek down.

Parsnips can also go in now, although to germinate they need spring-like temperatures of 10C (50F) at least, so warm nights are needed. Don’t be fooled by precociously warm days, because the clear skies will mean a frost and plants hate extremes.

Parsnips, the procrastinators of the vegetable kingdom, take a full 30 days to germinate, even in ideal conditions.

The large papery seeds fly about, so always sow on calm days, and do buy an F1 variety such as ‘Gladiator’. Hybrid vigour improves growth at every stage, including germination.

If you fail to get a row, re-sow or gap it up in April. It will be worth the effort!