It’s that exciting time of year again, where seeds are sown and the raised beds quickly start filling up.
After raising them in the heated propagators, this week I potted on the tomatoes and chillis and moved them into one of the outside tents. There, they’re enjoying real non-artificial sunshine for the first time as well as good airflow and better controlled watering.
The tomato varieties are Roma, Gardener’s Delight and Tomatoberry. The chillis are Apache and Scotch Bonnet. I plan to use the latter to make chilli powder; it’s too savage to use regularly in cooking.
Replacing them in the propagators a few days ago were courgette and cucumber seeds, plus some herbs for (eventually) the kitchen windowsill: dill, coriander and basil.
The big ones – courgette and cucumber – should poke through pretty quickly, hopefully next week, and I’ll pot them on straight away.
I use a mix of inert seed compost and perlite to help a little with lightness and aeration. With a steady temperature from underneath and bright grow lights above (hence the purple tinge), in theory it’s a good environment for germination.
Outside, I’d neglected to feed the soil in the raised beds with any kind of fertilizer or green manure earlier in the year, so dug in some chicken manure pellets as deep as possible before sowing the different seeds. The point being not to have the seeds in contact with the fertilizer in case it burns the tiny, delicate roots as they first appear. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen or I may need to re-sow, late in the day.
The full sowing/planting list for this season is:
| Type | Variety |
| Spring Onion | White Lisbon (tape) |
| Carrot | Sugarsnax |
| Carrot | Flyaway |
| Mangetout | Sweet Horizon |
| Beetroot | Boltardy |
| Broad Beans | Sutton |
| Coriander | Calypso |
| Cucumber | Burpless Tasty Green |
| Basil | British |
| Dill | Dill |
| Courgette | Midnight |
| Chilli | Apache |
| Chilli | Scotch Bonnet |
| Tomato | Tomatoberry |
| Tomato | Gardener’s Delight |
| Tomato | Roma |
| Dwarf French Beans | Castandel |
| Spring Onion | White Lisbon Winter Hardy |
| Lettuce | Bis Mixed |
| Lettuce | Spicy Greens Mixture |
| Runner Beans | Tenderstar |
| Beetroot | Cylindra |
| Swiss Chard | Bright Lights |
| Perpetual Spinach | Everglade |
| Shelling Beans | Borlotto Firetongue |
Already established are various berries, the herb garden and garlic.
And the garlic is doing well. It’s been in the ground now for about five months and will have benefited from some snowy and icy weather during the winter. The bulbs will be established below the soil line but now that it’s getting warmer they’ll really start to fill out. I’m very much looking forward to harvesting them later in summer.
Adjacent, their leafy cousin Garlic Chives are thriving in the herb bed. I must try making the garlic chive pesto I just read about on The Ginger Allotmenteer blog. Also thriving are their neighbours rosemary, thyme and sage. That herb bed is a favourite because it rarely needs feeding, which is more than can be said of me – hence all this growing!
Bye for now
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