Potting

Just noting that today I potted-up a dahlia and some lily of the valley which I had bought.

The parsips are coming along fine and the onion/leek are still alive. I have put them in the cooler balcony room.

A couple of Seville orange pips have germinated too.

Up already!

Just checked the seeds and was excited to see that some are already germinating - less excited to note that they are the basil and broccoli :-) Oh well, at least the system is working.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Seed time

I sowed the following in the Aerogarden today
               
Broccoli    Calabrese       4
Rosemary             3
Parsley    Moss curled         4
Sage        14-28        2
Strawberry    Alpine       8
Kale    Toscana            4
Busy-lizzie    Safari       10
Delphinium    Magic        6
Petunia    Purple lady      10
Geranium    Pelargonium     12
Basil    Large leaf            2

I miscalculated so actually have one station un-sown, need to fill that tomorrow.

The onion/leek and cucumber are now upstairs and I will move them into the cool balcony room as soon as I can.

I am planting the parsnips as they germinate, still need a few extra seeds. One has come up but no leaves yet.

Parsnips

I decided to try germinating parsnips indoors this year. A guy on Gardener's Question Time BBC radio said that you could germinate them on damp kitchen paper and then when roots appear use tweezers to transfer them to open-ended peat pots to grow on indoors. then plant out when warm enough. He said to put three seeds in each t and thin to one once established outside.
If I can do this then it could give me an extra month or so of growth, even longer maybe. Today some of the seeds have already germinated so I have potted them up. Normally I would be looking to sow them outdoors in May so if they don't suffer any shock going outdoors I will have gained as much as two months! Hm, perhaps I started them off too early.
I potted them up in newspaper puts - wrapped double paper around a narrow jam-jar. I put potting compost in the bottom and firmed it well, then topped up with seed compost so the seed will start in that and grow down into the stronger mix.

Cucumber and onion/leek seedlings all doing well.

Now it is March

Right then! For starters I am going to be much better at updating this blog!

On 27th Feb I sowed a few seeds -

Cucumber (Emile F1)
Onion (Bedfordshire Champion)
Leek (Starozagorski kamus)

The cucumbers (only two seeds sown) zoomed up and emerged on the 3rd day. The onions/leeks are not up yet but they should take minimum of 14 days so not really expecting them!
The cucumbers have a put each. Gardener's Question Time said that one plant of an all-female type would provide enough cucumbers for the whole summer so I may give one away if they are both producing. At the moment the plants are under lights in the kitchen, I will move them up to the sun-room when they are bigger and there is less risk of frosty nights chilling them.
Thought it would be fun to try onion from seed. Each will have  a pot of its own and then I hope to get them in the garden but I am not sure if they will do any better, or even as well, as the onion sets. Just wanted to try.

The kids gave me an Aerogarden for my birthday and we have enjoyed fresh herbs all winter. It came with various herbs, ready to start. The garlic chives did not germinate at all and the parsley and thyme did not grow as strongly as I expected - or possibly I over-cropped them too early. the two types of basil were great though and the dill was also very good. I have tried transplanting the basil, thyme and mint into pots of compost, not sure if that will work or not but the Aerogarden had finished its supplies of plant food and in any case I want it for seedlings.

I bought a seedling starter kit which has spaces for 72 plants so the next thing is to decide what plants to have in there and when to sow them. They don't all have to go in at the same time and I don't want them ready too soon.

This is the plan for now:

Name	Type	Germination	Plant out	Number
Strawberry	Alpine	14-28	Frost-free	8
Broccoli	Calabrese	14-18	When large	4
Rosemary			Frost-free	3
Parsley	Moss curled	14-21		4
Busy-lizzie	Safari	21-28	Frost-free	10
Sweet-pea	Jet-set	12 to 10	Frost-free	6
Petunia	Purple lady	14-21	Frost-free	10
Geranium	Pelargonium	7 to 10	Frost-free	12
Stock	10 week	14-21	Frost-free	9
Delphinium	Magic	21-42	Frost-free	6

Autumn already!

Actually it is more like winter now, with a good 3cm of frost in my square-foot beds.
I decided to get the garlic planted just in case it stays this cold for the rest of the month.
I planted four squares of garlic in the right-hand shallow box. In one square I put the small bulbs which I planted as cloves last autumn; I planted two squares with cloves from my 2nd-year garlic; and in one square I put cloves of a purple garlic which I bought at Frú Lauga. It will be interesting to see if any of those cloves mature in just one season or not.

Hmmm! Can't recall when I wrote that but obviously I forgot to publish it. I added another square of Italian soft-neck garlic from Frú Lauga.
 

Soft neck
1 year-old
M y cloves	Frú Lauga	My cloves

Whit Sunday

We are having a spell of lovely sunny weather (if the forecast is to be believed) so I made an effort and spent a bit of time in the garden today. Here is the status:
Deep box, left hand side - most of the potatoes are up now, and the Jerusalem artichokes. The poatatoes showed up when we were still having frost but at that point I had not filled the box with compost so I just piled more on and I think they should be safe enough from now on. The spring onions did not germinate at all so I re-sowed them today. The carrot week carrots only germinated about 50% and the rest of the carrots had quite a few missing stations so I sowed some more today - it is still plenty early enough to do this.
Deep box, right hand side - I transplanted the broad beans during the week, just because they were getting too tall, especially the Masterpiece ones. There is a full row of those, with four plants per square. Then three squares of Mendes broad beans. The parsnips did not start to show until this week and there were a few still missing today so I resowed in those positions, even though it is possible that the first lot of seed was still coming up. I put four broccoli plants in two squares - bought them at Garðheimar last week. That leaves two squares for runner beans and one for sweet peas. Those plants are ready to go in really, not sure if I will put them out tomorrow or wait another day. >/br> Shallow box, right hand side - this box is now full to bursting point. I pushed in four kale plants (from Garðheimar) amongst the garlic. The garlic experiment is interesting - the single cloves of Chinese garlic are not doing much at all. The bulbous cloves which i grew last year look great foliage wise, not sure if they are making a garlic bulb or not. The garlic cloves look OK too but again no way to tell what is happening below ground. The New Mexico aquilegia are doing fine, going to leave them where they are this year. I pushed in some freesia bulbs with them so interesting to see if they will flower or not. I added one square of spinach today, and one of mixed salad leaves (Ovation) - it says harvest after 21 days but I don't believe that. Three squares are taken up by onions (Hercules) which Elvar insisted on planting to go with the pepper plants indoors. he planted them and them seem to be coming up nicely.

I think that I started the beans all way too early this year so next year they should be two weeks later than this. I'm not sure if it is worth doing the carrots so early either. Some of them have one true leaf coming now, not convinced that I will get any carrots earlier this way and it may be just as well to wait longer next year. It does depend on the weather though. Indoors the various paprika and pepper plants are doing fine. Elvar's (from Natsha) is flowering already. The basil is looking good and I trimmed enough to make some pesto last week. The melon plants are storming upwards and I have tied them to canes. The Squash plant has emerged but doesn't seem very keen on life - wonder if it is too warm there? I also have a Bramly apple seed which is at least germinated and growing, and an orange pip which germinated but has not grown much in the compost.