25th March, 2009

Despite the sunny weather it is still quite cold once the sun sets, there was a frost one night, so I decided to use my plastic cloches to protect the carrots sown in the patio bed and to warm the soil.



The rest of the bed has strawberries (nearest) and to the left of the cloche are the perennial herbs (rosemary, chives, sage, oregano and thyme) which have all survived the winter well.

I've been sowing more too and the greenhouse shelves are filling up which is good to see. I sowed beetroot in two trays of 5x3 modules, seen on the lower shelf. You can also see the Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi seedlings on the top shelf in half trays nearest the camera position. At the back are some annuals for the front garden, Rudbeckia and snapdragons. In between are 3 trays of peas which I had hoped would have germinated by now, but maybe the cold nights are holding them back. On the lower shelf, is celeriac in a half tray and then in the plastic containers with lids towards the back is parsley.



I germinate parsley by soaking the seeds in water indoors overnight then spread them out on to multipurpose compost in those lidded containers. Those are what biscuits are sold in at Sainsbury's. I just poke some drainage holes in the bottom and there you have a mini propagator.

The leeks and spring onions are coming on, they are about 2-3" tall now. I also sowed some lettuce (Webb's wonderful) in pots and these are in front of the leeks/onions. The spring onions that I transplanted outside though have done very little, cold nights again?



I planted the onion sets (Corrado and Golden Ball) out into the bottom bed. I put them quite close together (about 3" apart) and 10" between rows, as I have got a lot this year due to a free bag offer from Thompson & Morgan. There was a half row left so I sowed some coriander there with the intention of sowing more in 4 week successions.

I was concerned that the overwintered broad beans were not very tall and the lower leaves are yellowing (wind damage?).



I checked my blog entry for last year for comparison and I was concerned then that the beans were not very big. Also this year's plants seem to be a few weeks ahead of last year to my surprise given the cold weather. So keeping a blog has proved very useful in that regard and no doubt I will be making further comparisons with last year for other veg.