So today I made my first mistake! I was pulling the blinds up where the tomato seeds are sitting on the windowsill, and boom, one of the trays crashes onto the bench. Amazingly the Honeybee cherry tomatoes row stayed intact.
I wondered if I should just shovel the soil and seeds from the other two rows back into the tray, but I made the call to scoop out that part of the tray and fill it with more seed-raising mix and re-sow the ‘Roma’ and ‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomato rows. Now it’s the Full Moon phase, so definitely not the best time to sow tomato seeds. Let’s see how well they do in comparison to the others!
I also sowed some Florence fennel seeds. ‘Milano’ is the best variety to sow for the warmer months coming up. Florence fennel is a crop best planted out in the cool of spring, and we’re expecting the seedlings will be ready to go out in about a month.
For a more detailed description of how to sow seeds, see last week’s blog post.
And this afternoon we also set up early season potatoes for chitting. I bought 4 each of ‘Rocket’, ‘Jersey Bennes’ and ‘Cliff’s Kidney’ from Newton’s Seeds where you can buy them singly. Might be too many for our family who are not great potato eaters, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of takers in the wider friends’ and family circle if we have a bumper crop!
Soak the potatoes in a water bath to which you’ve added 2-3 capfuls of liquid seaweed for 5 minutes, then assemble in an egg carton with the eyes up and on a windowsill (somewhere safe! – might have to be the laundry). For the next 3 weeks we’ll repeat the soaking in a seaweed solution once a week. The seaweed bath strengthens the seed potatoes and makes for a healthy, productive crop.
Have a good week!
From Jan, Rob and the Team at OEG!
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2 Responses
I have some rather large Agrias which I want to chit and I am thinking of cutting each one into three. Will it be alright to soak them after I have cut them or should I cut them up after I have soaked them?
We think it’s best to keep them whole and to soak the large potatoes once a week for 3 weeks in the liquid seaweed and grow on the chits. When you have good-sized chits, then cut the potatoes up and plant them straight away. There’s a risk of rotting and infection if you cut them up at this stage 🙂