It's the start of February, I'm counting down the weeks to when the onions and early potatoes can be planted out; for me this is usually the third week of March depending on the weather. The early and main crop potatoes are currently on a cool windowsill chitting away in a seed tray. The earlies are already developing shoots.
As the heated propagator has been on I sowed some flowers yesterday for the summer, sweet peas and nasturtium. Both can be sown late January/February indoors. The sweet peas I usually grow up a few canes at the allotment to attract the bees for pollinating. This year I have half the space so I'm not sure where I'm going to put them. Still, I'll sow them anyway and worry about that later! The nasturtiums end up in the garden where they meander about flowering until the first frosts of late Autumn.
I sowed tomatoes, sweet peppers and leeks in January (post link) and they have all germinated well. They've been taken out of the heated propagator and have been placed on a windowsill in the house. It's too cold yet for them to go in an unheated greenhouse.
The leeks look like a bad lawn and have a couple of cat paw prints in the seed tray, my female tortoiseshell is chief suspect!
The leeks (Musselburgh) will stay in this seed tray for a few weeks then I'll transplant 30 or so into a deeper container to grow on until they are ready to be planted on the plot in late May. The tomatoes (Alicante) came up really well, a bit of a surprise as the seed was a year past its sow by date and the packet as been open for three years. I sowed what was left in the foil packet and loads of them germinated so I've thinned to three strong seedlings per cell; I'll thin down to one per cell in a week or two. I only want six plants so I should be fine.
The capsicum sweet peppers (Corno di torro rosso) germinated surprisingly fast too. These elongated peppers are new to me; even in a heated propagator my usual variety (California Wonder) often took a month to germinate, these Corno di torro rossa appeared in two weeks. Again, it's far too cold for these seedlings to be in an unheated greenhouse so they are taking up windowsill space as well. They will be potted on into their own containers when the first true leaves appear.
That's it for this early February post. Bye for now.
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