Wednesday 27 March 2013

Is Spring here at last?


Unbelievably this is the allotment only 4 days ago!!

Today it is sunny - the first sun we've seen for ages - albeit still very cold - little more than 3 degrees centigrade still. But at least I have been motivated to venture outside and sow a few seeds - the first of the year I confess! I've found it so difficult to get going this year in the garden - it has been so wet, then so cold!

What have I sown? Well to start with I've sown two different varieties of Broad Bean into 3" pots of seed compost, watered them and covered them with panes of glass on the staging in the cold greenhouse. I hope the ever present mice out there will not be able to climb up to the staging - and anyway the glass covering will defeat them at the moment. Mice love digging up broad beans - all through the process of germination! Last year I sowed the seeds directly into the soil at the allotment - and lost the lot to mice!! The heater in the greenhouse is set to prevent the temperature going below freezing - that is all. I have given beetroot seed and asparagus peas the same treatment except that I have put individual seeds into 2" square modules in seed trays - and will transplant them out on the allotment in due course when it is warmer up there and they are well hardened off. I also thought it was time I sowed the tomatoes. These I have treated like the beetroot, sowing them into modules in seed trays. But I have brought them indoors and they are on a warm window ledge above a radiator, covered with cling film to keep them moist until they germinate.