22/3/26 - Good Weather Brings Good Progress
Good evening, and welcome to the first of two posts for this weekend, splitting up the weekly update to the allotment diary, and then another post which brings to an end the Broad Bean experiment. Let's dig in!
This week, the weather has been fine and settled, but with overnight temperatures still dropping down to around 0 or 1 degree overnight in the polytunnel, so still a bit cold to consider moving some of the more delicate seedlings out from the grow house. This week also has seen the delivery of some new seeds that I ordered from Kings Seeds, using our new allotment association account. A few of us who are on the committee meeting for our association were set up with accounts, and asked to make some test orders to see how it all works, before it is then rolled out to the rest of the allotment society membership. Given that I had already sourced all my seeds for this season, I decided to order some flower seeds. This week they arrived, and I sown them to see what comes. I picked up some Zinnias, Chrysanthemums and Cornflowers. Anyway, back to the veg..
Last week's pricking out and potting on all seems to have gone well. Everything that was re-homed has remained healthy, although it has got quite hot in the polytunnel at time this week, so a few calendula seedlings didn't react too well and ended up a bit, well, crispy. But the warm weather has brought on some good growth throughout. Of note this week is the sweet corn. It's take a couple of weeks, but there are now signs of growth. I am a little concerned at how many will actually germinate, so I decided to sow a back try of around another 12 seeds.
The sweet peas are positively bursting to get out of their cells. The roots have pushed out the bottom and the plants really could do with planting out. I need to leave it just one more week though, just because of the potential for frost.
The onions continue to grow on well, and the backup sowing I did a few weeks ago have now germinated and are coming on well. They will be a month or so behind the other ones that have made it this far, but I still want to keep them as a backup. Staying in the onion family too, the 6 bunches of shallots have all germinated well in their little tray, and it won't be long before they will need to be potted on. And as for the leeks, they are looking very promising indeed. In previous years, by now they have been left outside in their pots until it was time to transfer them into the ground. This year, they are certainly benefiting from being kept under cover for longer I think,
The peas in gutters that were sown last week have also started to germinate. Last week, after I had sown the early potatoes into buckets, I left the buckets in the small polytunnel. This weekend, I moved those buckets outside. The night time temperatures are still due to drop well into single figures, but by the time the tops are lifted and the foliage starts to appear, we should be well clear of any potential frosts. Moving those buckets outside made room for all the peas to be moved into the small polytunnel. This is the start of preparing the main polytunnel for the principle growing season, and freeing up the floor space.
There were two other main jobs for this week. The first was to give the strawberry baskets a good watering, and importantly a good feed of liquid seaweed too. They have been left undercover all winter, and since splitting out into individual baskets, would have been benefitting from fresh compost. Now though, they are growing very well and have started to produce lots of flowers. I filled up some buckets with water and liquid seaweed, and sat each of the baskets in the buckets for 5 or 10 minutes each to make sure they got a good soaking. Through the week, I will need to make sure I carry on watering them as temperatures are regularly reaching the mid 40's in the tunnel at the moment. I'll probably repeat the soaking and feeding again each week.
The other job represented a first for this season. A direct sowing, into an actual bed! I chose this weekend to sow this years parsnips. This year we have gone with another half bed, as this seems to give us plenty, and it makes good use of the other half of the bed currently taken up by the broad beans.
Back at home, in the grow tent and on the windowsills, the tomatoes continue to go well. The beefsteak plants really could do with being planted on to larger pots which is something I might get round to doing one evening this week. We've started to harden them off too, taking advantage of the fine weather we have had recently. Last week, I did a backup sowing of beetroot into two 1/4 trays, and it's really good to see that they have both germinated very well indeed. That means the first sowings, which had shown little to no signs of life have now been thrown. I've also got rid of a few other failed sowings. Two Uchiki Kuri squash plants, and a cucumber plant. I'll possibly sow a couple of other squash plants in their place, but we should be good for cucumber plants.
