Tomato seedlings are through.

I took the seeds out of the airing cupboard today and all of the tomatoes Lycopersicum esculentum  have germinated.  I put the pots into the cool greenhouse to grow on.  I will prick them out into their own pots when they are a little bigger.  The other tomatoes are doing well in the greenhouse.

None of the other seed I sowed has germinated yet.  I will have my work cut out when they do.

Went down to the allotment this morning and continued with the hugelkultur bed until it started to rain.  I put the weed turfs at the bottom of the trench this time because there may be some bind weed tucked away in it.  This was covered with a layer of holly branches, leaves and turfs.  It will give me a good raised bed to grow the climbing French beans on.

More seed planted.

I put in the rest of the Lycopersicum esculentum seed.  They are tucked away in an airing cupboard to give them a little more warmth.  They should be through in about a week or so.  I planted some more celery Apium graveolens var. dulce; lettuce Lactuca sativa; Cabbage Brassica oleracea capitata "Golden Acre".  The Celeriac Apium graveolens rapaceum were sown in a small pot and put in the airing cupboard with the tomatoes.

I have pricked out onions, celery, cauliflower and cabbage into trays or pots using the New Horizon's general purpose compost.  I have put all of these onto the shelves inside the polythene "greenhouse" I have put into the big greenhouse.  Not only will this keep them a little more protected from frost but will bring them on a little.

I went down the allotment yesterday and continued to tidy the comfrey bed.  I don't know if I have straightened all the lines of comfrey because they have died back and I could not find all of the plants.  They are more or less straight now though.  I have constructed the sundial here as well.

I put some black dustbins over the rhubarb, Rheum rhaponticum,  to force it a little.  This will mean that we can get some good petioles at the end of March and the beginning of April.  The skill is to remove the bins before the rhubarb becomes too weakened.  I heaped some of the horse muck around the bottom of the bins to heat them up and bring the rhubarb on a little quicker.


I have taken out the black currant cuttings because they have some big bud on them.  I think that the severe pruning I did on the main bushes has cleared off the big bud,  Cecidophyopsis ribis, from them. They look quite healthy.  I replaced two that died over the winter with cuttings that I had potted up.  I think that I am going to bury the plants that I took out.

I wasn't going to dig this area over; just hoe and use the three pronged cultivator to rake it over.  However if I am going to bury these blackcurrant bushes, I might as well dig the rest over as well.  I will have to bury the blackcurrants quite deep to avoid them depleting the soil of nitrogen and to prevent the big bud mite from escaping into the top soil.

I have started in earnest on the celery bed.  I dug out a trench and then sieved horse manure and pigeon muck into the next spit down.  I dug up the remains of the beans and peas that I had dug into this bed but they broke down and sieved into the soil just as the manure did.  There are some plane tree leaves Platanus x hispanica which are a little thick and rubbery in the horse muck.  I didn't think that they would go through the sieve but they did and you cannot make them out now because they are mixed in so well with the soil.  I am trying to keep this trench lower than the surrounding soil so that I can keep the celery damp throughout the year.  

We may have major problems with drought this summer because they are saying that the water table is very low now.  I hope that I have added enough organic matter to take up any rain water that we get and provide a reservoir which the plants can tap into.  I am going to try to use mychorrhizal fungi on all the plants that form associations with it because this may help in lessening the effect of drought.   

Tomato seed sowing

Sowed the Lycopersicon esculentum seed in a three inch pot using New Horizon's multi-purpose peat free "compost". I did not sow all the seed I had because there is no guarantee that I can keep the seedlings alive this time of the year.  I have other varieties of tomato and these will be sown in February.

I put the pot in the airing cupboard so that it would have enough heat to germinate.

The "All the year round" Brassica oleracea botrytis has germinated well and I will be pricking the seedlings out into 3 inch pots very soon.  The Allium cepa "Ailsa Craig and Befordshire Champion" have germinated but I will leave these for a while before I prick them out into larger pots.

I watered the Lathyrus odoratus  today.  I hope that I will not regret it.  They tend to get fungi attacking them this time of year if they are watered.  Phytophthora and Pythium, which are like fungi and Rhizoctonia and Fusarium, which are fungi, all attack seedlings.  This kind of attack is called damping off.  It is less likely to happen if the compost or growing medium are carefully sterilised but this time of year there is always the threat.

I might try germinating some Lactuca sativa and some Brassica oleracea capitata in the next few days.  

I washed quite a few pots today using washing up liquid diluted in a bucket of water.   There is some suggestion that it is not too important to wash pots nowadays because of the use of sterilised planting mediums that are almost always used.  I would question this.  To avoid the transmission of plant pathogens washing carefully in soapy water is a fairly essential procedure.

Now that I am going to start to make my own composts, I think that keeping pots and tools clean is only prudent.