BECAUSE I CAN SAY IT.
So, mental picture post today. Making up for radio silence for a few weeks. I’ve been poorly, horrible head cold with mild fever, suspect virus, it’s been over a week now and still all snuffly. Plus the weather has been abysmal – storm over the weekend, and heavy rain all around. Rubbish – allotment was flooded with standing water over the celeriac and fennel seeds so I think those are probably dead, but potatoes are starting to peak up and some seedlings are growing where the carrots and parsnips were sown, hopefully not just weedlings! The asparagus has made a second attempt to emerge, bless it, after getting frosted last time. Not sure it will be any more impressed with the swimming pool it’s emerging into…
The little coir pellet Jiffy propagator I got for the tomatoes and peppers worked too well! The seedlings were potted on very deep this Monday:
Leggy seedling, coir plug placed on a thin layer of MPC at the bottom of a 2 inch pot.
Gently push the seedling leaves down, without putting a dot of pressure on the stem, coiling the stem (see loop under my thumb) so the leaves are held roughly at the level of the new compost.
Fill and gently firm. Seedling should root from the stem now, which will put it in better stead than trying to exist with a 3-4 inch stem.
I also potted on 6 sweet pepper ‘California Wonder’ and 6 chilli pepper ‘Cayenne’ and many tomatoes; something like 3 ‘Yellow Stuffer’, a heritage tomato that looks like a sweet pepper, 6 ‘Pomodoro’, a bush cherry plum tomato, some ‘Gardener’s Delight’, a cherry tomato, some ‘Money Maker’, a normal tomato. The Aubergines hadn’t bothered so I recycled their coir. I was rather impressed by the Jiffy propagator/my office combination so I’ve bought some new coir pellets in case I want to use it, maybe for some flowers.
The blowaways are both full of young plants now – if only the weather would perk up so they could go out! I’m not allowed to sow a single seed now, I even had to put a pot on top of a quiet seed tray there was so little space. Here are some highlights, testing out this gallery feature, if you click one you can navigate through them if you want (they have comments):
