4 October 2024

Tomato seedlings are coming along nicely.  They’ve been outside for a while now due to lack of space inside.  But, I reckon they’re doing well enough and will be a good enough size by the time we come to plant them out at the end of the month.

So this month is dominated by seed sowing.  For fine seeds like leafy greens, herbs and flowers, I sieve potting mix to make a seed-sowing medium.  I sow them in rows and will ultimately prick them out into a bigger size pot, before planting out.

I have basil and marigolds seeds on the go to plant alongside tomatoes as companion plants.  

This is them today just starting to come up and they’ll be ready for pricking out in the next week or two…

And then we have the first of all the fruiting crops to sow – zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, rock melon and watermelon.  With these seeds, I put straight potting mix into the pot they’ll be planted out from and simply push one seed into the top 5mm of mix. When it comes to zucchini, I always go with Partenon hybrid as it’s self-pollinating and absolutely reliable. There is a fabulous variety of zucchini though, and if you have foodies in your house, you should go for it (I’m the only foodie in our house, hence my more conservative choice).  I love the Lebanese cucumber best and plan to grow it up one of our screens this year, so I’m sowing two to achieve good coverage.  Both zucchini and cucumber will need replacing in the middle of summer as they’ll have exhausted themselves by then.  I’m going against my real love of Buttercup pumpkins this year and only planting one of them, and choosing the grey-skinned Crown pumpkin for the other two plants.  This is because I really want to focus on good storage this year, and Buttercups just don’t store well.  Then we have two rock melons and two ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelons.  These watermelons are supposed to be small but I find them definitely big enough.  Remember to wash your pots out well with a dash of white vinegar, to make sure you’re not carrying any disease over to your new plants.

I’ve sown sweetcorn and sunflowers too – more than we need as they can sometimes come to grief when planting, and in the case of sunflowers with their delicate stems when young, they can break or bend easily.

That’s the case with beans too.  Seven out of the ten sown came up and they’re now planted out.  I’ve staked them until they get big enough to attach themselves to the screen.  I’ve re-sown the other three in the original paper pots.

More lettuces are on the go too.

And last but not least, if you haven’t fed your fruit trees yet, it’s time to get onto the job.  In spring we add a nitrogen fertiliser (in our case, chicken manure) around the drip line (where the ends of the roots are – mine could have been a bit wider), as well as a handful or two of an all-round fertiliser (like our Morganics).  We cover the fertilisers with grass clippings. This is for both evergreen and deciduous trees.

Enjoying sugar snap peas and asparagus out of the garden!

Happy spring gardening!

From Jan and Rob

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