ON IT! My 2020 propagation production line: April
Indoor gardening has been a welcome relief for me during the pandemic. It gives me something productive to do and one more thing to hope for in the future.
April will be my last major seed-sowing month until late autumn. It will also be my last post on the subject for now. After this, it will be bits and pieces here and there PLUS some successive sowing to stagger the harvest of certain vegetables like carrot and spinach.
I’m pleased that I had decent germination rates from most (by no means all) of the seeds I sowed in February and March. All these seedlings are going to give me a bountiful supply of fresh vegetables and flowers this year!
I will need to carefully remove individual seedlings and put each into it’s own little pot of compost, in a process called ‘growing on’. I’ll transfer some of the well-developed seedlings, like the sweat peas and sunflowers, to the greenhouse on my allotment plot to get them toughened up for their final growing locations in the great outdoors.
Potato ‘Red Duke of York’ breaking ground
I planted my first batch of chitted potatoes into the ground last month. The sprout above is the first one to break through. It’s happening! Once the plants have developed a bit more above ground, I’ll begin the process of ‘earthing up’, basically covering the new growth with more soil and allowing the plant to growth through again. I’ll ‘earth up’ at least twice, to protect the early growth from frosts, give the new potatoes sufficient cover to grow in (from root buds), and to obscure light and prevent greening of the tubers.
Most of April my sowings will be direct into the ground or in raised beds outside. These are:
Carrot (there’ll be successive sowings)
Brassicas, including swede. I confess! I didn’t get around to sowing them in March. Combination of staying in and just not getting my act together …
Salad greens, including lettuce and arrugula
Spinach of different types, including Jamaican callaloo or Amaranthus viridis (there’ll be successive sowings)
I’ve planted a final batch of sweetcorn in little pots indoors to extend the harvest period a bit. I can never have too much super-fresh sweetcorn.
UPDATE on my February 23 experiment:
I tried germinating cucumber and pepper seeds in teabags: The experiment was a resounding failure. None of the seeds germinated. I planted seeds from the same packet in compost in paper pots. They didn’t grow either. This leads me to believe that the seeds were not viable. Duff seeds. I’ll be taking the packets back to Wilko - whether or not I can find the receipt.
Here’s a picture of the rather unfortunate outcome:
I only managed to produce a flocculent growths of fungus! Major fail.
I’ll try again with a fresh batch of seeds. So, this means that pepper and cucumber are back on the list.
