I hope you find the slightly new look website helpful. It’s early February and I have already been busy sowing seeds in the greenhouse. I started a couple of weeks back sowing several varieties of chilli and pepper in my propagator at a temperature of 20 degrees centigrade. I also sowed Little Gem lettuce, spring cabbage and early broccoli on the greenhouse shelf and a large pot each of a new rocket variety, Buzz and a fantastic cut-n-come-again coriander called Calypso. I also sowed loads of Bowlands Beauty broad bean seed individually into loo rolls filed with a 50/50 mix of regular potting compost and JI no: 1 and put them under the greenhouse shelf to germinate.
At the end of January I planted out onto the allotment my favourite long-keeping garlic called Solent White and some Jermour shallots that I should have planted in November but forgot and a new variety to try called Piquant.
Last Friday 4th February I sowed pots of several varieties of tomatoes in gentle heat in the greenhouse propagator.
Now is time to start preparation of the early potato bed. Be sure to incorporate lots of well-rotted manure into ground that you have not used for potatoes for the last couple of years at least. Sprinkle a handful of fish, blood and bone fertiliser per square metre and rake to a nice tilth. Cover the ground with a mulch of black polythene. I buy 200metre by one metre-wide rolls from LBS. It cost about £60 including shipping but lasts a very long time indeed. Ihold down the edges with a few bricks and now wait until the gales stop before putting up some polythene cloches in a couple of weeks’ time to enable the ground to warm up.
