Dealing with seedlings

There were three or four pots of seedlings that needed transplanting into larger pots.  I like to use 3 inch pots because the plants have enough room to get relatively large before they have to be planted out in the allotment.

The plants that needed bigger pots were courgettes, cucumbers, okra, lettuce and leeks.

I decided to use my own mixture of compost using 50% peatless compost, 40% own compost,5% grit and 5% really well rotted leaf mould by volume.  The other plants that I have transplanted seemed to like this a lot.

I also used the mychorrhizal fungi in each of the planting holes.

I watered them in with tap water.  I don't have any comfrey liquid at home, however the plants will not need any extra nutrients until they are planted out in the allotment.  I will have to get some comfrey liquid when I plant out the tomatoes because they will be staying in the greenhouse all year.

I will be giving the tomatoes a mixture of 50% organic growbag and 50% my own compost mix as their final planting compost.  I may well put some grit into the mixture as well because my compost is a little fine after being sieved and tends to clag up a little.  I could really do with putting the tomatoes into their final big pots now but there are so many other plants in the greenhouse at the moment that there is no room.  I could do the bush variety but I will wait and do them all together.

There are still some leeks and lettuce that will need to be pricked out but they can be left in their seedling pots for a couple of days before they have to be transplanted into bigger pots.

All the beans have grown much quicker than expected in this very hot weather. I am thinking of planting out some of them.  In April - the first time I have ever done that.  

I have one or two of the Galaxy and White Apollo runner beans from seed that was given to me.  I will be no worse off if these get caught by the frost because I have more than enough Aintree.  So I am going to take a chance and put them out.  Similarly with the French beans and the courgettes.  I cannot believe I am putting these out before my brassicas.

The brassicas are hardy enough to go out now but they are not really big enough.  I like to grow them on until they are quite large and then the pigeons and slugs leave them alone.

I planted out some more lettuce watering it in with comfrey liquid.

The peas were hoed using the onion hoe.  This is a very useful little tool.  It saves a lot of hand weeding. I watered them with liquid feed and hoed between the rows.

I put some climbing French  beans in under the bean poles.  Again these were watered in with comfrey and a little mychorrhizal fungi.  Under the canes on the sweet pea bed, I put three White Apollo runner beans.

Now the rumour  is that there will be a frost this week.  If there is I will probably loose all the beans but they are from old seed that was given to me so I will not have lost anything.  If they survive, I will have gained a lot.