Seeds success...and otherwise!

This seed swapping business is so much fun! I had a pack through in the post from a lady in Scotland yesterday with about 8 half packets of seed – including a dozen F1 sweetcorn seeds which will form the basis of our ‘3 sisters’ bed along with some (as yet undecided) climbing beans, and our carnival squash.

The 3 sisters bed is a planting scheme that I picked up from the Grow Your Own Veg TV programme whereby you grow a block of sweetcorn along with climbing beans & squash growing underneath.

It’s from the native American Indians and is all very symbiotic – the beans feed the ground, the squash smothers the weeds & the sweetcorn provides the support for the beans. Although it’s a lovely idea, it does b*gger up the rotation, so I’ll use the land by the seedbed for this, I think.

I’m having mixed success with my indoor seed sowings – the cauliflower seeds which I sowed in jiffys in January are about 8” tall with just two tiny little seed leaves perched at the top end, and are – predictably – falling over as they are far too leggy. I’ve sowed some more seed in the jiffys & tried to increase the light levels by stacking all my furniture up under the Velux & perching the seed tray on top of the heap.

I’ve put the salad leaves trough up there too – funny, it seems really bright in the room, & not too hot – but although they look better than the cauliflower, they are quite tall too. Perhaps they just went in far too early - we shall see.

However, I’m having TREMENDOUS success with the pea shoots on the kitchen windowsill! After 10 days they are all sturdy little soldiers about 3” tall – & given my lack of anything going on seed-wise at the Hill, it’s quite tempting to plant them out rather than eat them!

It’s warm again this week – about 10 degrees – but wet today, but the days are getting appreciably longer – it’s dusk at about 6pm now, so not too long before I can nip to the Hill for a while after work!

It’s March when the less impatient of us get going, I’m told – but I am itching to get the first lot of potatoes in, as well as the onions & all these lovely seeds to be sown......