9/2/25 - Bathing Carrots
General Catchup
Before getting stuck into what today's jobs have been, just a quick update on the seeds sown in the last couple of weeks. Pretty much, nothing is happening yet.😂 Then again, it has been less than a week in some instances. At home on the Super 7, there's no sign of germination. The sweet and hot peppers sown on 2/2/25 have yet to make a break for daylight. Not to be outdone in the race to be last to break cover, the leeks in the polytunnel are also keeping their heads down. Out of the two, I'd like to think the leeks will put in an appearance first, so perhaps by next weekend, we may see something. Seeds from the pepper family are long time germinators though, so it could be a while yet, despite them being kept on heat.
On the propagator under lights, the first tomato and aubergine seedlings that were pricked out a week or so ago have taken to their pots quite well. The Red Cherry tomatoes in particular have pushed out a second and in some cases a third set of leaves, while the aubergine plants all now have an established second set.
Home Sowings
Back at home, I've been carrying on with the sowing schedule and this weekend saw the rest of the tomato seeds being sown. Using the 1/4 seed trays from the Super 7 propagator, I've sown a 1/4 tray of Tomato Red Pear, a 1/4 tray of Tomato Pomodoro Roma and a 1/4 tray of Tomato Steak Sandwich. I hope to get 4 good plants out of each of these varieties that I will then take on to grow for the season with some of them being grown outside, and some kept in the tunnel.
It was also time to sow the first few Cauliflower All Year Round seeds. This year, I am going to try spreading the sowing through the year with the intention of avoiding gluts. Growing cauli is quite hit a miss, but from this first sowing, I'm only looking for two plants to bring through to maturity. Depending on germination and how quick these early ones grow on will determine if I need to sow another batch in a month or two's time.
Allotment Doings
Since the arrival and spread of the woodchip, I've been deliberating on what to do with the paving slabs we have collected over the last 18 months. I certainly don't want to give them away because if the big woodchip experiment for paths doesn't work, I'll be looking to bring them back into use. Two paths on the first plot are being kept as slab paths, but now we have enough to get rid of the gaps between them. First job for the day was to work along the paths and shift along each slab until the full length was covered. Afterwards, I still had 8 spare, so I have put them out the front of the polytunnel temporarily.
I'll need to cut one slab to fill in a gap too small to fit in a whole slab. Once I have the tool to do that, I'll be pulling up all the slabs, raking and flattening the ground under the paths, and then resetting them into their levelled and final place.
Inside the polytunnel, there were a couple of minor jobs to do with a spot of watering and then using some cable ties to fix the mesh shelves onto the internal grow house to make sure they don't pop off the metal bars like they did last weekend.
The last job for the day was to do some final sowing for February. Last year, to reasonably good success, I grew carrots in a bath tub for the first time. There was no reason why I shouldn't carry on with this idea, but for 2025, I'm going to try refining the process a little. Recently, I've been reading about different ways of growing carrots. Some of them are a bit far fetched for your average allotment grower, but a technique that seems a popular way of getting your spacing right, is by sowing into an egg tray. People make holes in the bottom of the trays, where the eggs site, then put them onto the carrot bed, partially fill with soil and then sow into them. The idea is that as well as spacing correctly, the egg box rots away. I didn't want to go that far, but I decided to use a cell tray with holes in the bottom of it. Then, using a dibber, made a hole in the compost through each of the cells, into which I sowed 2 or 3 individual seeds. Then, I covered the holes up, tamped it down a little before covering with the perspex sheet. For this first sowing, I've gone with Carrot Berlicum 2. A total of 42 cells have been sown, so now we see how germination goes. If it goes well, the next sowing will probably be done in the same way.
That brings to an end the fun for this week. There's always things to do on the plot, but for now all the sowing is done and things can settle down for a while. The weather is set to remain quite chilly for the next week or so with overnight temperatures hovering around the freezing mark, and day time temperatures not making double digits. It'll be interesting to see what next weeks polytunnel temperatures come out like. Until then, thanks for reading.
