Cucurbits

Cucurbits are taking over the greenhouse; I have a newly germinated all green bush courgette and gherkin, both sown on Easter Sunday

3 newly germinated outdoor wonder melons, sown on Easter Saturday. I'm still waiting for the hunter squash to put in an appearance

5 courgettes (3 black beauty, 1 tondo di toscana, 1 gold rush) and 4 cucumbers (2 marketmore, 1 marketer, 1 mini-white) are ready to be potted on

3 yellow scallop squash and 3 jack o'lantern pumpkins are ready to be planted out

I have already planted out an all green bush courgette and 2 slangen longoda cucumbers

Legumes

My first sowing of mange tout have been planted out into one of the new raised beds in the front garden

They were joined by my first sowing of delikata peas in a reusable growbag

French beans had a bit of a shaky start; I sowed 10 each of delinel and gold dukkat just over a week ago and left them on the staging in the greenhouse... the next morning I came down to this

I suspect it was a mouse as they tend to go for these types of seeds... I posted a quick query on the veggie forum to see if fellow gardeners agreed with my suspicions and some people suggest chitting the seeds before sowing or covering them in something that mice don't like e.g. mustard or paraffin!! 

Anyway, once I got over the fact that there had been a mouse (or mice) in my greenhouse, I popped the damaged ones back in the modules and added a new seed to each, before moving them into the potting shed on a higher shelf (just in case).

It didn't take long for them to germinate and some of the damaged ones have also survived as some of the modules have 2 seedlings poking out

I thought I may as well do another sowing of all legumes, so a couple of days later resowed all of the above along with old faithful cherokee trail of tears; these are also pushing their heads out of the compost in record time

Potatoes

I sowed my main crop potatoes over the Easter / Bank Holiday period; desiree, which I have never tried before. They are in potato sacks like the earlier sown spuds, which have already pushed through the soil.

These are the charlottes, which will need topping up with compost soon

And these are the sharpe's express, which I have topped up since taking the photos

Tomatoes

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.

What is it with Peppers?

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.