Welcome to February though the heavy rain over the last 24 hours is anything but welcoming. The site is utterly waterlogged again and we are going to need a few weeks of warm winds and sun to dry the ground out so it's anywhere near workable. Exactly two years today, according to this blog, I was out digging in sunshine; while I now have a bit of sun outside at the moment the ground is useless for anything.
So, inside it is and I've just sown some sweet peppers, variety Californian Wonder. These are a cheap, generic sweet pepper that produce lovely red and green peppers from July to October.
Sweet peppers can take sometime to germinate, even in a heated propagator and I've found seed is seldom viable after two years of opening. So, I tend to sow plenty, especially in the second year of the seed to ensure five or six plants, which are enough for our needs. If you get a load come up then you can always give some away.
Just a quick update on the leeks and tomatoes I sowed last month. The leeks are up and I have plenty to thin out to my usual forty plants. I'll be pricking them out into a larger, deeper tray in the next few weeks. The tomatoes have done much better than last year when the Shirley F1's I sowed were both expensive and pathetic. The Alicante's and Marmande have germinated well and I have around ten seedlings of each; unless something disastrous happens, these should provide me with five of each variety for eventual growing on.
The tomatoes and leeks are sitting on a sunny windowsill at the moment; the toms are bound to get a bit 'leggy' due to lack of seasonal light but they can be planted deeper which actually benefits them as the buried stems will put out more roots for better growth.
That's it, see you soon.
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