Gardening tips for January: Plan the vegetable garden
Rotating your growing plan is the key to the successful vegetable garden and January is a useful time to plan


As a nation of born-again vegetable growers, we now prepare, as ever, for a year even better than the last. The good gardener is a record-keeper, so that we can avoid the howler of growing the same crop on the same soil each year. Rotate the growing plan so that brassicas are grown on one plot, onions, leeks and shallots on another, peas and beans another, carrots and parsnips another. It's not a perfect system, but it's workable and reasonably effective in keeping vigour up and disease down. A simple sketch retained each year will do nicely.
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Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by His Majesty The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.
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From one Earl and his dog to the resurrection of one of Scotland's great buildings: The remarkable tale of Glamis Castle
John Goodall explores the development of the medieval Glamis Castle in Angus — seat of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne — and its spectacular transformation into one of the landmark buildings of Scottish architecture. Photography by Paul Highnam.
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Athena: In the eyes of Government, will the Arts always be last?
After a year of Labour rule, life doesn't seem to be getting any better for Britain's cultural institutions.