Monday 28 March 2016

First flowers

A lot of seeds were sown on 24th March. 7/8 modules each of eschscholzia, nicotiana, candy tuft, gypsophila, cosmos "Purity", cosmos "Sensation", scabious "Ping-Pong", scabious "Crown", 15 sunflower "Vanilla Ice",  a tray of  calendula and some mixed calendula and others. The hardiest left outdoors but nicotiana, gypsophila, cosmos, sunflowers needed to stay in greenhouse.
Gypsophila, cosmos, sunflowers began to come up on 6th April.

Tuesday 22 March 2016

A sunny spring day

Sowing seeds was my first job today. Radishes and garlic chives in the plastic bed, lovage and parsley in small modules and left outside, two types of basil and pak choy in modules in the conservatory and nasturtiums in modules outside again along with some chard.

Pak choy up on 26th March, basil on 28th, radishes on 1st April.

I also prepared bed 1 for this year. The seaweed and leaves was raked in, the whole bed was forked over to disrupt the tree roots which had grown. It was nice to see a few worms this time. The bed was dressed with 150g of lime and 200g of BFB, raked over and fork-smoothed.

Monday 14 March 2016

Sowing gets going

Today I sowed a good pot of carrots (Gigante Flakkee). The medium was 50/50 leaf mould and Jack's enriched with an ounce or so of blood, fish and bone. And I set about tomato sowing. Five varieties this year: Gardeners' Delight (2yo), Black Russian and San Marzano from last year, with Costoluto Fiorentino and Principe Borghese, both from Seeds of Italy. These were sown in three inch square pots with Jack's compost.

Tomatoes came up between 20th and 22nd March. Carrots started appearing on 27th March.