First Signs of Life

After planting up my first leeks and beans just over a week ago I thought I would share their progress.

Broad and Runner Beans - 10 days after sowing

No signs at all from the Runner Bean Sonesta (on the left), but three strong plants from Runner Bean Enorma and eight out of twelve of the Broad Bean Aquadulce are coming through.

These have been kept on my kitchen table which is out of direct sunlight and watered from the bottom.


One thing I have noticed is a couple of very spindly shoots also sprouting alongside the beans, obviously sonething that is coming from the potting compost.

As fast as they come up I have been removing them, but I am a bit disappointed that the compost isn't as sterile as it should be.

I also planted up 48 leeks at the same time as the beans, but so far only one shoot is showing.

A little bit disappointing, but the shoot that is showing looks to be quite a strong one.

If they all come up  like that then they should be soon ready for planting out at the plot.

Sowing the first seeds of 2013

Well, last night I finally took the plunge and sowed my first seeds of 2013.

I had been putting this moment off for some time now for a few reasons.

Firstly, at the moment there is very little room free to put seeds at home as my son and his girlfriend are staying with us until they can find a new house, so we have a lot of their furniture squeezed into every available spare space.

Secondly, although several of my reference books suggest New Year's Day as the prime time for planting leeks, I had concerns that the level of natural light that would be available to any seedlings wouldn't be enough to prevent them going weak and leggy.

As these leeks are being grown as part of a fun online competition I want to make sure to give them the best possible start, so I decided to delay sowing until now in the hope that a later date would give stronger seedlings.

I planted 48 Leek 'Mammoth' into two trays of individual modules.  Once again I strayed from traditional methods which recommends sowing thinly into a tray and only thinning into modules once the seeds are a few inches tall.

I decided to plant direct into modules, one seed per module to give the leeks the best possible chance to develop without any competition for water and nutrients and also no disruption to the root system until I am able to plant them out in their final positions.  The main disadvantage with my chosen method is that if any seeds fail to germinate then I have wasted the space, but there will be nothing to prevent me from sowing another seed in the empty module, so I am hopeful that I have made a good decision here.

I also decided to plant up a few beans, again to try and give them a good start.

I sowed 8 Broad Bean Aquadulce Claudia, 8 Runner Bean Enorma and 4 Runner Bean Sonesta.  All the beans were sowed into individual 2 1/4 inch pots.

I watered them from the bottom by standing them in the sink filled with a couple of inches of water for a few minutes.  Looking at them tonight I noticed that a couple of the Broad Beans had risen to the surface of the compost.  Now it is too soon for them to be germinating and so I pushed them back under the surface.

I would have sowed more but I was limited to space to store them on the kitchen table.

As soon as the weather improves enough I will transfer these trays into the blow away and sow a second batch of leaks plus a few more varieties of beans and peas.