1/1/25 - Sowing Onions, Broad Beans and Lettuce
Sowings
Happy New Year to any/all of my readers. I hope 2025 brings you great joy and success in your growing ventures. To kick off our new year, I've started the first sowings for the season. It's seemingly the latest trend (although some say a tradition) to sow onions on Boxing Day. I have done that in the past, but not this year. I've chosen to kick off my onion sowing on New Years Day instead. Why you may ask? There are traditions, there is always a push amongst YouTube channels and gardeners to persuade people that you must get things sown and planted before anyone else, and that that's the best way. But at the end of the day, if you look at the back of the seed packet, how many seed packets say 'to be planted out boxing day'? Answer: None. In fact, most seed packets will give a range of several months, maybe January to March for example.
I still feel I may have gone slightly early with my first sowing, but this is a new seed batch, and I want to be sure that germination is good. I am growing two types of onions this year. Ailsa Craig will be the first sowing in January, and I've sown 2 1/4 size seed trays from my Garland Super 7 propagator, but I haven't plugged it in. I've left the propagator on the windowsill above a radiator, so that should hopefully be ample enough warmth and light to allow germination. Once sown, I covered them over with 1/4" of vermiculite before watering lightly. The second variety will be Bedfordshire Champion, but I won't sow them for another month or so yet.
My second sowing for today were some backup broad beans, Aqua Dulce. Back in October/November, I direct sowed half a bed of these beans. Germination was excellent, nearly 100% in fact. But some have been eaten off by pests, possibly mice, so I have decided to sown half a dozen backup plants, again indoors. Once these have germinated though, I will pot them on and possibly move them into the polytunnel before putting them in the ground later in the spring.
In addition to these first sowings for 2025, today I have also done a little bit more work inside the polytunnel, including sizing and fitting membrane along the beds, the central path and out the front of the tunnel by the main door. All the ground disruption during the build means that there is a lot of mud around, so I've laid the membrane in anticipation of getting woodchip to lay down on the paths.
The second job in the tunnel was to suspend the new shelf which I've recently built, from the crop bars. This shelf gives me some space to place seedlings and trays, up off the floor and away from the slugs. To make use of it straight away, I've also sown a tray of cut and come again lettuce. Lettuces is generally thought to be OK in cooler temperatures as long as it remains frost free is my understanding. So, it's worth giving it a go.
General Update
Elsewhere on the plot, where things are in the ground growing, all seems to be OK. The emphasis over the last 3 months has been to bring the new space we acquired at the end of September '24, up to speed and prepared for the 2025 season. So, given the amount of space we now have, there isn't a hug amount in the ground, but this will change.
The garlic planted at the start of winter finally seems to have stalled it's growth as the winter temperatures have eventually arrived. Some of the leaves have yellowed, but moving into spring, we should see new green growth and more foliage develop.
Of slight concern is the broccoli which we bought as plug plants from a local garden centre. As the autumn and winter so far have been relatively mild, it's already started to form flower heads and in one case has already started to flower. The cold temperatures haven't arrived to tell it to hunker down over the winter, and instead, it's probably getting a bit stressed. The rest of the plants so far seem to be holding their own, but I wouldn't be surprised if they end up going to same way.
As mentioned earlier, the broad beans planted at the end of autumn have germinated and made a good start, although there have been some subsequent losses.
Sitting in the wings, I also have a tray of calabrese and cauliflower. They were sown at the end of last season, left in the hooped tunnel where they grew, but then were massacred by slugs inside the tunnel. Rather than tip them onto the compost heap, I kept them moist and they started showing new signs of growth again, so brought them outside and left them fight for it. We now have a tray of some quite healthy plants, which have stopped growing and I've been thinking about getting them in the ground to see what becomes of them. Maybe, I'll plant them in the ground in the hooped tunnel...
Finally, the carrot bath has produced it's last harvest for the season. It's been a great success but is now clear of crops. I've mulched it down with a bag of peat free compost for the winter, and left the net cover over it to prevent the local cats population from using it as a litter tray. Towards the end of the winter, I'll add the plastic lids to the top of the bath to starting helping warm the soil up and protect it from excess rainfall, ready for the first carrot sowings.
