2023 - the good, the not so good but hopefully not ugly of growing your own!

Soontobeoap

@KajiKita thanks. We are at the most southern point of England so hopefully be fine. They do establish really well if put out early and are in a sheltered position away from the coastal winds. If they do get caught I have so many more. The granchildren were keen to plant loads! 😂

KajiKita

Soontobeoap said:

@KajiKita thanks. We are at the most southern point of England so hopefully be fine. They do establish really well if put out early and are in a sheltered position away from the coastal winds. If they do get caught I have so many more. The granchildren were keen to plant loads! 😂

Sounds good 👍 😊

KK

MissRikkiC

I was just coming to say the same regarding the frosts @Soontobeoap @KajiKita I put a few lettuce modules out at the weekend and moved 2 tomatoes to the green house. It’s got a window missing so still will be pretty chilly in there I suspect so I may bring them indoors. I may fleece the lettuce and my broad beans!

I really need to get the rest of my seed sowing done but finding I have such little time! I think this week I’ll just fill up as many little pots with compost as I can and then when I have another few minutes spare I can get the seeds in them. 

Annoyingly I know I already need to resow another cucumber as my daughters meddling fingers pulled out one of the 2 which germinated 😂 

I caught up last night with beechgrove and noticed that they were putting their seeds in a tray of water to ‘water in’ rather than a quick spray. I appreciate there isn’t likely a wrong way other than to water too much initially but can anyone advise on their optimum method? 

Here I’ve been spraying with a mist bottle and then covering the propagator but they’re drying out too fast I think. 

KajiKita

@MissRikkiC
The watering of the compost that you have put seeds in depends so many different factors - if it's really wet coming out of the bag I might not bother adding any more water initially for example.
For larger seeds I tend to water thoroughly and then leave to drain before putting on a heated mat with a plastic sheet over them. I tend to think that they need the moisture to soften their relatively thick seed coat. 
For smaller seeds I have a teeny-tiny watering can (child sized) that has a delicate rose and do 1 or 2 passes with that over the pots / trays and then do the mat / sheet thing. My aim being to have a moist but not wet environment around the seeds, whilst waiting for them to germinate.
I only ever soak from the bottom if the compost is absolutely bone-dry. But even then I would probably leave it for an hour or so to drain / dry out a bit before sowing. 
I have found that some seeds which are very prone to struggling initially if the soil gets too wet (cucumbers and tomatoes in my case) I initially sow in a mix that is leavened with 1/3 to 1/2 of fine vermiculite - they seem to grow like weeds with extra drainage / insulation and I had to give cucumber plants away last year, as I had 100% germination  *and* successful growing last year!!

Sorry, not a very precise answer but I hope it helps with the 'feel' of how you might approach this? 

KK  

carinjo

I always try and water from the bottom, reasoning being that the roots grow towards the water. Not sure how scientific that is. Also prevents disturbance of small seeds. 
My squashes mostly all germinated. I sowed 2 per 10cm pot, as per instructions online. Do i now have to remove one?! Wish i'd only done 1 per pot. 
The tomatoes ready to be potted up, just need to find the time. 

droopsnoot

I have one chilli seedling visible, after weeks for waiting for something to happen. Let's hope it will encourage the rest of them to start waking up.

alicef

Had a bit of a break from seed sowing as we got on with weeding the paving.  I spotted a few likely plant sale perennials that had self seeded so I've hoiked these out and potted them up, (I have no shame). 

The plant sale is this Saturday so I need to pick out which of the toms. I'll be keeping.  If I was really smart I would just get my toms from the plant sale (LOL).  My plants are getting too big for the 9cm pots but I'll only pot on the ones I keep.  These will go into 10L pots, which I will have to keep in the potting up shed until poly tunnel birds have fledged - hopefully not long now.  

Re: watering - for delicate seedlings I always water from the base and once the half trays go into the potting up shed I have capillary matting which gets wetted and seems to work well.  The fleece was out the other night but this morning everything seems to be ok.

Sweetcorn; butternuts; french beans; climbing beans - need to start sowing these.  Other than radish and the germinated parsnip seed I haven't started direct sow yet.    Will do a few direct sow lines of beetroot, spinach.  This year thinking about doing carrots in big pots. 

Soontobeoap

Planted a lot of flower seeds yesterday. I am very late with the marigolds for companion planting but they usually come up quickly! Also planted cosmos and tobacco plants. They all came with gardening mags that are a freebie from Lloyds bank! The bush tomatoes that I planted out last week survived 3° last night. EEK!!!!  I did make sure that all of the ones hardening off were indoors snuggled up. My excitement for today is that I opened the 6 old compost bags of weeds, grass cuttings, and twigs that I placed behind the shed 2 years ago and discovered dark rich compost. It was very wet. I have spread it over a border and will dig it in tomorrow. My first time making my own compost. I was like a kid at Christmas when I opened them. 😊. Oh yes and my potatoes in a pot are just pokking some leaves through the soil so I will add more when I get out there again. Once I start I could spend all day out there and its only a little garden. 

Glittering_M

Ordered some more seeds last night! Periennals that I want to get started. 

I now just need to actually decide and dig out where they will eventually go I'm just worried about making the wrong choice as I'm digging up a space that was a flower bed decades ago but is now scraggly lawn and I want to make sure I am happy with it but that unsureness is what is holding me back from doing anything!

Soontobeoap

Dug over the vegetable bed and whilst digging in the compost that I laid on top last night. Took some of the dry compost of the top of the compost bin and put into old compost bags. Tied them at the top hoping to get more compost from them in 2 years time. I have a beehive composter that I have been filling for 2 years and want to get down to the composted stuff at the bottom before I clean it up and give it a fresh coat of paint. Set up the bean wigwam. Planted some runner bean seeds and started to thin out the strawberry bed and re site some plants around the rest of the garden. I have 3 different types that fruit at different times. Another bush tomato plant in a pot. The trouble is that with everything I do in the garden I discover so much more to do. 🤦‍♀️.