Brussel sprouts

Sprout season stretches from September to March. Sprouts eaten around the Christmas period are sown between mid to late April and planted late May to early June.

Sprouts have a high nitrogen requirement as you need to get height into the plant. 30g per m2 of sulphate of ammonia should be applied at planting, a month later and again in July.

Sprouts should be picked when the bottom ones are between 2-4 cm in diameter. The sprouts you buy in the shops are normally 22-30 mm and 30-38 mm. A single plant will yield 60-70 sprouts or about a kilogram in weight.

Carrots

Carrots eaten at Christmas are usually planted between April and May and harvested from September onwards. Before sowing, the soil must be prepared, with lime applied 30 days before planting and fertilizer spread seven days before planting.

Parsnips

Parsnips sowings are direct drilled between April and May and Harvested from August to March. Before sowing, the surface must be forked over to a depth of about 10cm and raked to remove stones. Parsnips take about two to three weeks to germinate depending on the weather.

Potatoes

Mash them, roast them, boil them, bake them or slice them for your Christmas dinner, all Christmas servings of potatoes start out them same way. The main crop of potatoes are planted from April to early May and harvested during September and October.

To prepare the soil for potato planting, it needs to be ploughed, harrowed and rolled a number of times until it is suitable. The crop is growth from tubers sown to a depth of 5-10cm, with two tonnes of seed per hectare.

After the development of the potato canopy, which takes about four weeks, the soil must be ridged two to three times at intervals of 15-20 days. The soil moisture content must be maintained at a high level and farmers must monitor the crop for pest control.

Once the leaves of the potato plant have yellowed and the tubers can be easily separated from their stolons, the crop is ready to be harvested. If the potatoes aren’t intended for eating immediately after harvesting, they are left in the ground a little longer to allow skins to harden. The potatoes are then harvested.

Turkey

Preparations for Christmas turkey’s begin in June and July, when the turkeys are just a week old. Turkeys spend the first three to five weeks in a brooder, a temperature-controlled shed. The temperature starts off at 32 degrees and is gradually lowered to around 15 degrees.

They are then weaned off heat over two weeks before being let outside to roam where they are fed, depending on the grower, ad-lib up until the time when they are killed for Christmas, usually Christmas week.