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.

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.

Sweet peppers

I sowed some sweet pepper seeds in the first week of February. They are in 2 inch peat pots, with my mix of seed compost. There are two seeds in each pot. One old, one new! - 3 pots of shop Ramiros and 3 of California Wonder. I saved some seed from a late maturing small pepper for the new seeds. I wonder what the germination will be like.
Notes: First one up (a Ramiro) on 23 Feb.and by 27th two of each variety were up.
28th Feb. Sowed 10 potlets, 3 seeds each of Ramiro for Steyning Museum sale on April 9th. Up on 12th March.

First seeds up!

On Saturday 6th February, I saw that my onions and leeks had both come up in the conservatory. That's just 8 days after sowing. The same leek seeds took 16 days last year. This confirms that they came up because I moved them closer to the heat source. Germination does not seem to have deteriorated with last year's seeds.

Throw in the Javelin!

My first potatoes went in yesterday. 5 Pentland Javelin into pots (10 litre).  Each one went on a bed of Jack's Magic compost enriched with about an ounce of blood, fish and bone and was covered with more Jack's. They will sit in the greenhouse until they are showing well.

First seeds

I sowed onions and leeks today. 40 modules of Tropea Rossa Lunga and a potfull of Lyon Prizetaker.   The compost I used was Jack's Magic, leaf mould and sand in ratio 2:2:1. They are on the conservatory window sill to germinate.  

Pentland Javelin

I bought 10 seed potatoes yesterday. (£1.99). Five are set up to chit in the conservatory at the moment and the other five are in the fridge to save for a "second crop" planting, probably in July. I'm following the experiment from "Home Grown Veg" on YouTube.