Biggest and smallest!

Now the kidney beans, sweetpeas, and snapdragons are up.
I probably planted the beans and sweetpeas much too early - I doubt if it will be warm enough to plant them out before mid-May and I have a feeling that six weeks indoors will be too long. Have to see how that goes.

It is bitterly cold outside, a few degrees of frost at night and just over freezing during the day. I'm not touching the garden yet ;-)

More seedlings

The basil and tomatoes are strating to come up now.
It seems to work well to put them out in the cool part of the sunroom.

And now the broccoli

Yes! The broccoli is sprouting today so that tray is in the sunroom too.
Lovely sunny day today so I hope that it doesn't get too hot for the seedlings. perhaps I will organise some shade for them to be on the safe side.

Up already!

Amazing! Some of the calendula are already germinated so I've move dthat tray into the light.
I picked up my book about square foot gardening today and I intend reading it over the weekend. If all goes to plan I will get the wood for the frames so that Easter can be spent sawing and screwing it together.

Seed time

I am always on the late side with sowing seeds indoors. There are no suitable window sills in the house and seedlings tend to get too leggy before they can be planted out.
Now I have a sunroom (we glassed-over the balcony) and I'm going to see how seedlings do in there.

Planted in peat pots:
Sweet pea - Old Fashioned Mixed
Runner bean - Hestia

I've never had any luck with runner beans before, the leaves have gone papery as soon as they are planted out. I might keep these indoors longer if that is possible. I wanted broad beans but there were none in the garden shops, just runner and peas. Fingers crossed. The sweet peas are because I love the smell so much. No idea if they will do much here.

Planted in plastic trays (1 or two seeds per space):
Calendula - Art Shades
Antirrhinum - Tom Thumb Mixed
Broccoli - (Stem) Kalibroc F1
Tomato - Ailsa Craig
Pepper - (Sweet) Minimix
Coriander - Delfino
Parsley - Plain Leaved 2
Basil - Sweet Genovese

Those are the seeds that caught my eye this year. The coriander claims to be slower to bolt than the normal one, it has pointed leaves. Most of these are for growing indoors I think - unless global warming really takes off! I have carrots and parsnips to sow outside when that is possible. The seed trays are all covered with plastic and at the moment are on the landing - as the seeds germinate I'll move them somewhere lighter. I used some imported potting compost, mixed with some fine pumice.

A new start!

Another "summer" is beckoning! Every year I get fired-up with the idea that I will be able to grow tons of veg if I get everything right.
The main snag is that I am a very lazy person :-) and although I enjoy digging, weeding, and sowing in the spring I'm not too good at the after care.

I've had a small veg plot for 15 years. The soil is terrible, seems to be the original soil for the area: acid. It has always had a lot of horse-tails ready to grow like crazy, then a few years ago I added some manure and introduced annual weeds which I simple can't get rid of.

A few weeks ago I saw something about squarefoot gardening which claims higher yields for less work which sounds perfect! So that is my new plan.

I've ordered the official guids to the method, off Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/yzjankx

Hope it comes soon.

Next step is to sow some seeds indoors so that I will have plants ready when things warm up outside.