I am determined to make my own seed growing medium and potting compost after my recent bad experience with commercial peat free products.
The coir comes in a dry brick which is easy to rehydrate.
The kitchen compost just needs to be sieved.
Then it is a simple mixing job. After searching the internet I went for 2 scoops compost, 2 parts coir and 1 part perlite.
Now I am ready for my end of season sowings. At least I am confident that there are only healthy ingredients in my mix. I feel sure that I won't be buying any proprietary mix next year, which is admittedly a leap of faith at this early stage.
In time honoured tradition here is this year's batch of HXB.
The weather is roasting just now and the best bit is that the night time temperature is holding up well above freezing. I have been pricking out flowers and sowing beans and squashes. If we were to get another frost forecast I would have to take seed trays indoors. Some space has been freed up in the shed now that the potato planting has started. That is another Good Friday tradition (planting potatoes).
How many days to germination? When is it time to throw in the towel? Could you be throwing out viable plants or are you wasting valuable greenhouse space? Annually these perrenial questions arise. As you can see from the above I remove non germinating seed pots to a dark corner of the shed - just in case there is a chance they spring to life. The dates of sowing are on the reverse of the labels and reveal that this batch of cucurbits is beyond redemption.
Sowing Dates
But something else I was about to give up on has revealed signs of life after I had given up all hope. It is the only dahlia I am growing this year so I was a bit put out about wasting my money and effort. The tubors have been sitting in moist compost in the greenhouse since 5/4/18 and even given trips out when the weather turned warm.
The Bishop of Landraff -at last
I was on the point of reusing the pots and compost when I spotted some growth above soil level yesterday.
The Bishop Emerges
It is not necessarily all or nothing either: These beetroot were sown on 7th March and afforded protection from the elements in the greenhouse. Only a few emerged within the first month despite the "seeds" being clusters of seeds and those that did emerges have been so slow to grow that I might as well have just waited for the conventional out door sowing at the beginning of May.
But here is a warning about giving up. Last year I tried to save some seed from our Lenten Rose plant. "Use fresh seed" is the hellebore mantra, so I popped them straight from the seedhead into this tray on 13 June last year. Absolutely nothing happened (except for the occasional spray of water) until about 4 weeks ago when the first sign of life was detected!
Today I have potted the seedlings up and have high hopes that they will flower - next year! I am amazed - Amazed that I had the "good sense" not to give up and recycle the potting compost and grit when I did my spring clean up.
Vegetable garden blogging is a contradictory activity: Either you have nothing to report and all the time in the world to blog, or you are so active that you don't have the time or the energy to blog. Recently I have moved from one phase to the other. Aside from the improvement in the weather dictating a change of gear I have also been helping out in a school vegetable garden lately so demands on my vegetable growing time have doubled. Having made my excuses here is an update. Pride of place goes to the migration of the sensitive plants to the greenhouse where they are resident 24 hours.
Tomatoes
Courgettes and Butternut Squash
Chilli Peppers
Outside the greenhouse the former occupants are disporting themselves across the "patio" area.
Spot the bench to relax on.
Indoors the sowing programme continues with the second round of brassica sowings. Nowadays I am much more disciplined about labelling everything at the time of sowing:
This year, after sowing, I log everything on a spreadsheet. I realised today that I have now made my 100th sowing of the year. (That is home sowing: school sowings have their own log.)
It's that time of year when you are fed up waiting for spring. On Thursday I looked out anything from my seed collection that could possibly be sown in February and filled twelve small pots - as many as I could fit in two seed trays which themselves fit snugly in my propagator. Just a sprinkling of seed in each - let's see what happens! Said propagator is tucked out of the way in the coal cellar which has a power supply and a grow light ready for when the first sprouts appear.
Don't forget those labels
That was Thursday, on Friday the view of the Pentland Hills (just south of Edinburgh) suggested that I might have got a bit carried away:
The Pentland Hills
My impatience seems to be shared judging by other gardening blogs.
It's snowing again outdoors, but indoors something is stirring:
Broad Bean
The broad beans have not had any "extra" heat although they have appreciated indoor temperatures. Now that they are coming through they will be turfed outdoors to get as much daylight as they can.
The other new starts are a bit more thermosensitive and need a bit of encouragement from this:
The Germinator
Lifting the lid:
Tomatoes, Celeriac, Parsley, Basil - Onions
Everything has come through, except for the parsley, a notorious slow germinator.
