First seedlings

My first seedlings of the year (if you ignore the garlic, onions and broad beans I planted in the autumn) appeared this week.

On the tomato front, Roma VF is this year’s winner, with the first seedling raising its head on Friday, followed by three more the next day. Trailing slightly behind were Gardener’s Delight and Black Russian, with one seedling of each apearing above the soil by the end of Saturday. These were all sown two weeks ago on 28th February.

From the legumes, sugar-snap peas are leading the field, closely followed by asparagus peas. One seedling of each showed its face on Saturday. I am particulary pleased because both of these are from seeds I saved last year; the seeds from the packet have not appeared yet.

I have been a little unfair to the rapini; all three varieties (40, 60 & 90 day) sent up seedlings within a week of sowing, so they really deserve the title of first seedlings of the year. But after the tomato-moth devestation last year, I am keeping a watchful eye on my tomato seedlings.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Back to the garden

Now our family of three has settled, I have returned my attention to the vegetable garden.

Despite my best intentions to plan my sowing and select my varieties before the new year, Sebastian’s arrival in December has left me well behind my tight schedule :-). On the other hand, the garlic, onions and broad beans I planted back in November are coming on nicely. Even the elephant garlic, which hadn’t show any signs of growing before the snow arrived, has now begun to appear above ground.

In order to get back on track, this weekend I have revisited my garden plan (thanks to the really useful planning tool at growveg.com) and placed an order to replenish my seed collection (thanks to moreveg.co.uk who supply smaller quantities of seed for much lower prices than the big boys do).

I have also sown my first seeds for the year: a couple of tomato varieties (more to come!), some sweet peppers, rapini (or broccoli raab), more broad beans, sugar-snap peas and some asparagus peas I saved from last year. In all honesty, it may be a little early for some of those to be growing now, but I am aiming to avoid vegetable overload this year by sowing successionally so I have only started a small number of each.

After this one weekend I am feeling a lot more confident and excited about the prospect of growing veg this year. Now I just need to finish digging the beds for everything to be transplanted to…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook