Sowathon!

March has been a busy month for many reasons, and I've been way behind with seed-sowing for the new season, but in the last week I've squeezed in a few hours in the garden and taken the opportunity to catch up!

This time last week was the spring equinox, when the days become longer than the nights again (hurrah!), and it seemed like a good time to sow my tomato seeds. I potted up all the pepper, chilli and aubergine plants from the propagator - they're looking big and healthy and have been spending daytimes out in the plastic greenhouse (pic above) - and I sowed five varieties of tomatoes in their place: Amish Paste (a good cooking tomato, but tasty sliced as well), Dr Carolyn (delicious heritage variety!), Angelle (my favourite, from seeds saved from supermarket toms), Skykomish (a blight-resistant variety) and Indigo Rose (the 'black tomato', super-high in antioxidants). They all popped up in just four days and are growing away on the windowsill now. The electric propagator is a real help in getting warmth-loving seeds to germinate!

They look a bit leggy - I guess we've had some gloomy days lately - but they'll catch up with themselves and I'll plant them deep when I pot them up.

We spent a couple of hours topping up the big raised bed in the garden, with the last half-bag of the compost we bought for the purpose last year, plus a layer of new multi-purpose compost. I treated the bed with sulphur before sowing to try to begin lowering its high pH (see previous post), but I decided it might be overcautious to limit what I sow in it this year - after all, growth did seem to improve quite a lot during the course of last season, and the layer of fresh compost should help a bit too - so I'm trying a bigger variety of veg in it than I originally planned. It won't take long to see whether they grow well or not, and I can always resow something else later... The bed already contains some parsley, chives, garlic and perpetual spinach from last year, and I filled up the rest of the space with rows of carrots, turnips, lettuce, spring onions, komatsuna, watercress, spinach, kohlrabi, radishes and mustard.

I also sowed some more celeriac seeds. I had been hardening off my young celeriac plants, but then I read somewhere that if celeriac gets too cold in its first spring it can think it's in its second year, and go to flower rather than producing a good root. Last year's celeriac didn't actually go to flower, but it was a terrible failure and I wondered if my early-hardening-off could possibly be why... So this new set of seedlings will be coddled indoors until the temperatures are higher out there, and we'll see if it makes a difference!

The corner garden bed needed a good clear-up - it had quite a few weeds, last year's bean poles and old bean and pea plants, and some honeysuckle and snowberry invading fast. Once tidied, I sowed some peas and mangetout against the fence, and scattered mint leaves and chopped up dry mint stems over them to keep the mice away - it works a treat!

 

Finally, I sowed some chard, leaf celery and flowers (cerinthe and achillea) in cells in the plastic greenhouse, and planted some early 'Accent' potatoes in sacks. The potato shoots could be harmed by frost after they appear, so I'll need to keep an eye on them and keep earthing them up or throw fleece over them on cold nights. I've got six of these bags so I'll sow two more in two weeks, and two more two weeks later, to spread out my harvest a bit.

I'm nearly caught-up but there's still plenty more to do, and it'll be April in just a few days... In fact, I'd better get back out there!

Seed Sowing!

At last! The day is here! I've been itching to get starting with this season's seeds since, ooooh, about the second of January, but there's really not much point starting that early and seedlings grown when days are short can end up leggy and weak. Instead, I've taken on board a tip from veg-growing guru Charles Dowding, who advises waiting until there are ten hours of daylight each day before sowing seeds. This happens in mid February, and I've certainly noticed the evenings lengthening these last two weeks so hopefully it will make all the difference.

I like a good clear rule like this - it means no umming and aahing about whether or not it's the right time, no 'well I'll do a few now and a few later and see if there's any difference', no worrying.

Setting myself a clear day to get started - and making it a bit later than perhaps I'd like - has also meant I was far more organised than usual beforehand. I'd cleaned and tested the electric propagator in advance. I'd sorted out all my pots, and I've got a big bag of surplus ready to give away. I'd even written out my plant labels - I usually put the seeds in first then find myself writing labels with grubby fingers while trying to remember which pot's which - not clever!

I've also written up a sowing and planting plan for the whole year, which I'll use to keep records of the dates I actually sow as well. I can see at-a-glance what needs to be sown and where each month, so there'll be no forgetting things or puzzling over when to sow things for winter. I'm sure it'll get tweaked a bit along the way, but you can see it here if you like.

I sow all my seeds in peat-free compost - usually New Horizon organic peat-free. Peat-free seems to have a bad rap in the press - they'll tell you it's not suitable for seed-sowing, or that you have to sieve it and add vermiculite and water more, as if it's somehow more complex or more dangerous - but I've never, ever had any trouble with it; it's really very good stuff. And digging up peat is destructive, unsustainable, and totally unnecessary.

So here they all are. Tucked up in the electric propagator are three sweet peppers (Marconi Rossa, Lipstick and Kaibi Round), three chillies (Ancho Grande, Jalapeno and Big Jim Numex), and one aubergine (Bonica F1). They all need a bit of extra warmth to germinate well, so the electric propagator is really helpful, and I hope to be able to pot them up just in time to sow my tomatoes in the same propagator sometime around mid-March. On the windowsill are cape gooseberries, two pots of leeks (Autumn Giant Porvite and Lyon 2 Prizetaker) and some celeriac (Monarch). I've sown these things first as they are all slow-growing crops that need an early start in order to crop in good time, or to reach a good size.

Hooray! Getting these seeds started is a really good feeling and makes the spring feel that much closer. There's nothing else quite like the promise of big beautiful plants and tasty harvests just from putting a seed in the soil.

Celeriac fail!

Last year we tried to grow celeriac for the first time. I raised some lovely healthy little 'Prague Giant' seedlings at home, planted them out in a row on the plot around the end of May, they produced some really healthy and vibrant plants with a delicious celery-like aroma and classy purple stems and... nothing. I watched those roots, I waited, I watered, I waited some more, and they never swelled. I'm pretty sure they can't have wanted for water (especially with mycorrhizal fungi applied) and they should have had plenty of nutrients too (and everything else in the same bed certainly did well).

I cleared the row in disgust in mid-November, and there was nothing but a tangle of roots beneath those lovely thick stems. I've read since that they do all their swelling in the late summer and autumn, so maybe, just maybe, they were about to surprise me just as I gave up on them, but c'mon... mid-November? Surely they should have shown signs of growth by then?

I'd like to try again but it seems sort of futile unless I do something differently - but I really don't know where I went wrong, and it's a popular variety that plenty of other folk succeed with. This year I will make sure to sow them early and plant out as soon as possible, and make sure they always get plenty of water, but if you have any other ideas or suggestions for better success, please do tell!