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.

Planting Calendar

As a relatively new gardener, one of the most difficult things for me has been knowing when I can plant my seeds, and whether they need to be started off inside, or if they can go straight out into the ground outside.

All the information I need is contained in the many gardening books that I have bought or been given over the past few years, but digging them all out to cross reference and look up every seed before I can get round to actually sowing anything has always led to me delaying my sowing way past the optimum planting times.

I decided that rather than end up planting things too late again like I did last year I would do the hard work and collate all the information into the same place, so I spent most of last weekend creating a Planting Calendar in Excel.

[URL="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzlq-b8-KZuiTXRLbGFEcHd1MlE/edit?usp=sharing"]https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzlq-b8-KZuiTXRLbGFEcHd1MlE/edit?usp=sharing[/URL]

The calendar shows which seeds can be sown each month.  You need to scroll down to the third page (the ones in colour) to see the calendar.

It shows which seeds need planting indoors, outdoors, outdoors but undercover and even when to plant out the seedlings originally sown indoors.

Please have a look at the file on the link above and let me know what you think of it.

First Week Back on the Plot

Last weekend I went to my local pound shop and picked up a few choice goodies for the allotment.

I got four bags of seed potatoes, 2 x Pentland Javelin (first earlies) and 2 x (second earlies), each with 8 tubers of each.

I also got two nets of onion sets, one Sturon and one Stuttgarter, both of which look to have about thirty bulbs in.

There were several packets of seeds including sweetcorn, chillis, mizuna, coriander, several peas and beans, little gem lettuce, cherry tomatoes and a pack of sunflowers.  I was also fortunate to pick up several fruit bushes from Aldi at £2.50 for three.

I managed to get a couple of different packs of grow at home mushrooms so I can compare how they both perform.

This year I have decided to keep detailed records on how well I do, financially, with my allotment.  The cost of anything I spend to use on the allotment is offset against the equivalent price I would have had to spend to purchase any produce that I can harvest.

At this point in time I have spent £34 in total, but I have harvested a few bits of the overwintering veg (including the cabbage pictured to the right) which would have cost me £4.75 if I had bought it, so my net cost is is £29.25.

This isn't a problem as I fully expect the majority of my costs to be incurred in the first part of the year, but when the main harvesting begins at the start of summer I hope that I get into a surplus quite quickly.

 The fruit bushes from Aldi were 3 x Red Goosebery Hinnomaki, 5 x Raspberry Tulameen (this should have been only 3, but there were five separate canes in the pack), 3 x Blackberry Thornlass Evergreen and 3 x Redcurrant Jonkheer Van Tets.

As the area designated for fruit bushes is still very waterlogged I have planted them into a temporary home in one of the raised beds along with the blackcurrant 'twigs' that Diane gave to me before Christmas.

When we had the heavy snow a couple of weeks back the netting over my brassicas in bed 1 was pretty much destroyed, so I needed to remake the entire frame and re-hang the netting. 








This time I covered the entire bed rather than just the bottom half as unfortunately the pigeons had got in and rather shredded the remaining two savoy cabbages.

These had been doing rather well when compared to the savoys in the other raised bed, so I am quite diasppointed as I had a bed with stepdad Ken about whose cabbages would grow the biggest - mine in a 'lasagne' bed, his in a traditional double dug bed.

Up until now mine were doing best - I just hope that now they are covered they will be able to recover as the weather starts to get better.

The Jumbo Garlic bought at the supermarket is really looking good, with shoots a good five inches tall, but the garlic purchased from a supplier has yet to show at all.

Not really sure why, but it's all a learning curve still.






The leeks which I brought from home very late last year have survived the snow and are doing well, and are now about 8 inches tall.




The bed full of onion sets is starting to look pretty good, with virtually all of them now showing strongly.

The two bags of onion sets I have just bought will be going into the ground later, after the chance of frost has passed.



I am going to my first ever seed swap tomorrow at the Peveril of the Peak pub in Manchester, so I am hoping to return loaded down with plenty of new and unusual seeds.

In the Bleak Midwinter ......

Well.looking back on my recent posts I am a bit ashamed to note that I have only posted twice in the past two months despite my best intentions of updating at least weekly.

In my defence, however, I must say that the weather had been horrible and so even when I have been able to get to the plot, there has been very little to do apart from tidy up and repair any damage to the frames caused by the frost and snow.

On the rare occasions when I did manage to get on the plot I was often greeted by the very beautiful, if frustrating sight of my over-wintering vegetables coverd in a thick layer of frost.

Some were affected more by the frost than others - the perpetual Spinach and rainbow Chard both were hit hard, presumably because of the high water content in their stalks. 

Others, like the cabbage survived without any problems.

I was a little concerned about the smaller brassica seedlings that went into the beds very late last year, and had been attacked by pigeons, slugs and caterpillars but they too have come through the worst the winter has thrown at us so far.

I thought the frost 'halo' on this tiny Brussel Sprout especially nice.

The drainage channel I had started to dig before the weather made it impossible to carry on got completely full from the heavy rain and had then frozen solid - the picture shows eight inches of solid ice!

Late January on the Allotment - Video Update

I've not been able to get down to the plot much recently, either the weather has been too bad or I haven't had any transport, so I was quite anxious to see the state of my raised beds and their frames after the recent heavy snow we have had in Oldham.

When I got there it was soon clear that the majority of the plot had survived the worst weather of the winter so far with the exception of Bed 1 where the netting had been pretty much destroyed by the weight of the snow.

I was also looking forwards to seeing the results of the visit of the digger to the plot last weekend when the drainage channel that I had dug in Autumn was deepened and widened.

Hopefully this will allow most of the surplus surface water on the plot to drain away once I manage to get pipes and gravel into the trench on my plot.

I will report back once I have been able to make some more progress.