The tomatoes are loving it now they've been potted on

Things are coming along nicely

I decided that the tomato plants were strong enough this week so I potted them on into 3" pots burying them up to their seed leaves in compost. This has the advantage of curing their legginess and the buried bit of stem will produce new roots as well. They're still in my light box, which is rapidly becoming crowded, as the heated beds won't be turned on until later in the week. As soon as the heated beds are turned they'll be moved into one of the light tents in the potting shed. They'll be joined by my chilli peppers which are also doing well since they were potted on as well. Not all of the tomatoes and chill peppers got potted on, some were thrown away because they were just to leggy, but I expected some losses and germinated more than I needed, so that's no great problem.

Once the heated beds are turned on it's rapidly going to become to warm for my leeks and onions to stay in the potting shed so they'll be hardened off and moved into the small greenhouse for a while, before they're hardened off again and then moved into the large greenhouse which will be their eventual home. I'm very impressed with the Red Barons, I put two seeds in each module and pretty much every seed has germinated, so now I have the choice of thinning them down to one per module or pricking out the extras and doubling the numbers that I have. The Ailsa Craig on the other hand have been far slower and more sporadic to germinate so I've decided to sow a couple of trays of Bedfordshire Champion as replacements. They've only just been sown so I don't know what their germination rate will be like, and it was an old packet of seed so I'll just have to wait and see I guess.

The lightbox is getting pretty full now

Successional Sowing

One of my biggest failures last year was that I just threw a load of seed in and sat back and waited for it to be ready to harvest. It was great, pretty much everything germinated and went on to be something actually worth harvesting ... all at the same time. This meant that we had huge gluts of produce followed by a barren wasteland as I hadn't had the forethought to spark of replacements. So this year I'm determined to successionaly sow as much as I can as this not only avoids gluts, it also helps to keep each bed as productive as possible.

With a tad of luck I should be able to successively grow beetroot, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, pak choi, peas, spring onions, sugar snaps, radish, various herbs and any other seeds I find. My goal is to have a harvest every month, some from as early as the end of March, right through to the end of the summer growing period although that's going to take some imaginative usage of the beds. The quick growers are easy, I can use the bare bits in the beds of the slower growers until they become full, after that it'll be a case of finding space.

Egyptian Walking Onions

Apparently they really do walk! Egyptian Walking Onions are something that I've been after since I saw them on the RealSeeds website but unfortunately they'd sold out until at least next year. Then Andy from the allotment site very kindly sent me some so that I could have a play and grow them. I'm pretty excited about it as they look very different and I like different. I've not actually planted them yet as I haven't decided which bed to slap them in but they'll be going in somewhere soon no doubt.

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