Sow! Sow! Sow!

I know there are good vegetable plug plants available but why make life easy when you can make it more difficult and time-consuming? 

This is the time of year when I am sowing seeds like crazy.  My seed box is like the millennium seed bank and I am already struggling to keep up with the pace.  But if I stop for a moment I still marvel at the miracle of it all, that a tiny tomato seed can grow into a substantial plant and in turn produce thousands of new seeds wrapped up in delicious fruits.  Seeds are powerhouses of potential and it’s up to me to release it. Tomatoes, chillies, peppers, cucumbers, leeks, salads, parsley, peas, sweet peas and mangetout – are simply not enough.   I have a long way to go yet.

I do the seed sowing because I’ve got the smallest fingers.  This physical advantage is very useful because the thinner the sowing, the fewer seedlings need to be thinned later on.  And thinning is one of the most frustrating jobs in the greenhouse even using a pair of tweezers.  I put the radio on and if I am distracted by the ‘afternoon play’ I have not so much thinned but scalped the seed trays.  (Never let me loose with your eyebrows.)

In the Midlands, seeds need to be sown early to make the best use of the somewhat shorter growing season.  I do warm up the raised beds up with cloches but it is much more practical to start seeds off in pots and then plant them out later. Planting out small plants also helps to prevent slug damage.  If a pea plant is a few inches tall and can be tied to a cane, there is more chance of it surviving until morning.

Seeds such as parsnips, carrots and a few others are fussy and need to be sown directly into the raised beds.  Since it is March and still cold, the beds are nowhere near warm enough, so I don’t have that joy until later on in the spring.  (I usually do about 3 sowings of snips because they are difficult to germinate and as for carrots, I am in the remedial group for that one – but at least the seed companies make good money out of me.)

I don't use a heated propagator mainly because one would not be enough.  So with practise over the years (and a fair amount of failures) I have perfected my own routine which seems to work, give or take the odd weekend when we are away and come home to shrivelled specimens.  I start the seeds off in trays, pots or modules, in unheated propagators in the warm kitchen and when the seeds are 'up and about', I move them to a sunny, windowsill for a few days.  The knack is to get them into the greenhouse before they become leggy.  More often than not I finish up taking some trays down the ‘garden path’ only to bring them back to sick bay because they are struggling. 

Somehow, each year I manage to get the seeds grown into plants and it is a relief when the special care baby unit turns into a nursery and the plants can fend for themselves a bit.  It is liberating not to have to say to friends “...must go now, I’ve got to check the seedlings......”

I do believe that the effort does pay off in the end, even if the early spring is frantic.  I think seed sown plants are stronger and more disease resistant because they are not reared as intensively as commercially produced plants.  And of course there are so many more varieties to choose from.  This is probably the reason why my seed ‘shoe box’ is bulging.  I cannot just have one or two different tomatoes, I have to sow a wide range of different ones because once calm breaks out on the plot, I really love to compare and contrast them.  In any case, a salad with homegrown tomatoes is delicious but made with a rainbow of tomatoes, it is beautiful.