Today I will mostly be growing

I’m still having some organisation issues with the lack of space in my mini greenhouse. I know its my own fault I have 13 cucumber seedlings potted on and I’m the only one who eats cucumber in my household however I can’t bear to give up any seedlings. Also I have let a few flower seedling trays creep into the greenhouse this year as our garden borders are in desperate need of brightening up. (they have had a distinct lack of attention due to my vegetable plot). So I have a bit of a juggling act on my hands!

This weekend I have planted out the 3 calabrese plants into plot 3.

Potted on 1st batch of february Tomato ‘unknown’ seedlings into larger pots.

Potted on Broccoli (tenderstem) seedlings

Somehow I think I have planted too many Broccoli and Calabrese seeds (this might be adding to my storage issues!):

Yesterday I made sowings of Calabrese, broccoli tenderstem, runner and french beans and summer cabbages in pots and root-trainers for the mini greenhouse. As per my other post I already potted on my cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes and now my mini greenhouse is very full with not much space to spare.

I had a bit of a sort out and cleared out the bottom row which was being used as storage for pots and trays. Whilst I had all the trays out on the table I thought it would be a good idea to do a stock-take to record what trays of vegetables and flowers I have so far, so I might be able to keep track of them all. So here goes:

Here’s what’s in my mini greenhouse on 19.04.08:

Vegetables
All vegetables (apart from peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers) will be transplanted into the raised beds when they have grown on a bit, space has been made in the plots and when the signs of frost have passed.
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Today I was mostly potting on Cucumbers (marketmore), Sweet Peppers (romano mixed) and Tomato (unknown) - could either be Golden Sunrise or Green Zebra but I forgot to label it so its pot luck what I have!

How to Pot on Seedlings

Tools Required:

• Shuttle Trays with 9cm pots, (I bought mine from Poundstretcher/Instore for £1.99 per tray) or similar,
• Multi-purpose compost
• Sieve,
• Dibber and Widger,
• Watering Can,
• Plant Labels and Pen.

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The weather was lovely and warm last week with temperatures higher than normal with the thermometers hitting 17 degrees on Friday 4th April 2008, I was happy thinking my seeds will finally get underway with their growing, until today Sunday 6th April where the temperatures dropped off the scale at a frustrating minus 2 degrees centigrade.

Heres a picture of my snowy vegetable plot:

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Last week we endured the gale force winds and heavy rains, of which my mini greenhouse door snapped under the force of the wind and is currently being propped up. The heavy rain however did seem to help my peas, broad beans and cabbages put on a spurt of growth. I did manage to transplant a few of the tomato and calabrese seedlings that survived the onslaught of the weather and my clumsy handling.

I also couldn’t wait and sowed the rest of my tomato seeds last week and bought some more cucumber seeds (variety: marketmore) and sowed them as well.
Somehow in the wind I managed to tip up my tray of pepper seedlings, however I have saved most of them and sowed some more just in case the current ones don’t survive!

This weekend the wintery weather has continued with heavy snow showers here in Essex, it did settle briefly on my broad beans and then turned to slush.

Update on Raised Beds on Week 6

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I had a slight accident with my seedlings in the modules in the mini greenhouse. I was reading a forum message on GYO Grapevine about encouraging your seedlings to grow 2 true pairs of leaves (so you can transplant them) as mine still only have their 1st pair of leaves. It said if you put a piece of white card behind your seedlings it can bounce the light towards them, which can only be a good thing.

However I improvised as I didn’t have any white card and opted for the flat underside of my polystyrene pot tray which I propped up behind the seed tray. It seemed ok until yesterday when I realised I couldn’t actually see my seedings anymore as they were underneath the tray, it had toppled over and flattened my seedlings!

However I think I may be able to salvage most tomato and 1 cucumber seeding and luckily my pepper seeds are only just breaking the surface so they have been saved from bended stems. The calabrese seedlings had gone a bit leggy so I think I will scrap them and try again with another batch anyway.

Here’s a current picture of the worse for wear looking seedlings:
(See below for closeup pictures)

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