The original 5 germinated tomatoes have been doing pretty well since I moved them out to the greenhouse and potted them on a couple of times
Since then they have been joined by another 8 money makers and 1 red cherry
Once again, germinating them proved difficult this year; germination times were random and sporadic. Similar to the peppers I tried a number of different methods; the difference was that all the seed was from last year's packets, but I don't think it is a generally stated that you should always use new seed.
Anyway, at least I have enough plants to keep me going for the season.
If you have read March & April Roundup, you will have noticed that I have sown more than 135 chilli and sweet peppers (if you include the ones that I sowed in January & February).
From all of those sowings I have a grand total of 1 bellboy, 1 ozarowska, 4 chilli shake and 2 apache plants.
1 rokita germinated and then promptly died off and I have absolutely no idea what I am doing wrong... I tried combinations of new seed, old seed, saved seed, modules, small pots, sowing compost, multi-purpose compost, unheated propagator, heated propagator, windowsill, cold greenhouse... and still very poor germination rates?! The plants that have germinated came from saved seed and I'm now concerned that they won't fruit. Who said growing your own was simple?
So, for the second year running I have purchased pepper plants. A visit to the garden centre resulted in 3 bellboy, 3 sweet long (never heard of that before), 1 apache and 1 jalepeno
Then on the way home from there I stopped off at the supermarket and they were selling plants too?! So I came home with 3 luteus (never heard of that one either), 1 cayenne, I cheyenne and 1 scotch bonnet
So, there is still hope for my traffic light chilli jam this year.
Way back in October I planted out a selection of brassicas... I thought I might be able to use them for spring greens if nothing else. The only one to turn into anything was calabrese.
The florets were a bit spindly and cooked almost within seconds, but the flavour was still great. I won't be repeating this intentionally but it was interesting to see it survive a freezing cold winter and manage to "head up"... the remaining plants are still in the ground, one has bolted and the others are large and leafy, but too tough for greens. I'll probably need to pull them up soon as I'll need the space.
In November I sowed the last of a packet of peas with the intention of using them for shoots... well, I just left them in the greenhouse and forgot about them. Last month I noticed a couple of flowers on them so planted them out. Today they were looking a bit worse for wear and as I was pulling them out for the compost heap I noticed a few pods, so shelled them
Even though it's only about a tablespoon, they have turned out better than the ones I tried to grow last year... maybe I should consider overwintering some later in the year.
My lack of posting for a couple of months doesn't mean I haven't been busy; in the past few weeks I have sown:
15 orange wonder chilli pepper
15 aji crystal chilli pepper
15 rokita chilli pepper
3 cayenne chilli pepper
12 apache chilli pepper
10 roma tomatoes
5 sub-artic plenty tomatoes
41 (yes really!) money maker tomatoes
45 (and again, yes really!) california wonder sweet peppers
10 diablo sweet peppers
10 ozarowska sweet peppers
10 bellboy sweet peppers
2 gherkin cucumbers
4 mini-white cucumbers
2 slangen longoda cucumbers
2 marketer cucumbers
2 marketmore cucumbers
4 all green bush courgettes
3 tondo di toscana courgettes
3 black beauty courgettes
3 gold rush courgettes
10 sharpe's express potatoes
10 charlotte potatoes
8 okra
row of ishikura spring onions
row of white lisbon spring onions
row of barletta spring onions
row of chantenay red cored carrots
row of early nantes carrots
row of beetroot
row of spinach beet
row of pak choi
row of autumn mammoth leeks
wild rocket
3 reine de glaces lettuces
3 little gem lettuces
5 golden acre primo cabbages
5 kalibos cabbages
5 kale
5 early purple sprouting broccoli
5 calabrese
5 all year round cauliflowers
5 autumn giant cauliflowers
3 evesham special brussels sprouts
2 red delicious brussels sprouts
4 yellow scallop squash
3 jack o'lantern pumpkins (from saved seed)
10 yellow-podded mange tout
10 delikata peas
9 mini-pop sweetcorn
9 swift sweetcorn
Not all in one go obviously, and some of them (tomatoes and peppers in particular) were because of very poor or rather failed germination... more about that later.
I finally got round to tidying up the strawberry bed, so can now make out the original 6 plants from the weeds!
I was pleasantly surpised at how far the runners had rooted themselves alongside the currants and raspberries... hope that doesn't cause too much competition for nutrients though.
The last of the leeks were pulled up
And I carried out various general tidying up tasks. So, that's it... pretty much up to date.
