Germination
- By Haidee Clarke
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- 21 Jan, 2019
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Today..... we are mostly feeling eager.
You get some Amazon vouchers for Christmas and you accidentally buy a self-watering window sill propagator.
Over the past few years we have purchased our partially grown veg from our local garden centre and planted out a month later than most people would. That, as we have come to learn, is the way our climate works here.... we work a month late on everything. Even when Monty Don was telling us to take out our old tomato plants we were still harvesting a ton of ripe fruits. It got us thinking..... if we could grow and acclimatise our own plants to the environment, we may stand a better chance of planting early and maximising our season.
We lack anywhere warm in these here hills to start growing from seed. We currently don't [but hope to] have a greenhouse (let alone a heated one) or conservatory and our porch is an unheated wooden shed waiting to blow down in a gale. There was no hope of doing anything on a large scale but we thought, starting small, we would see if it would be possible to extend our growing period. The problem being that we struggle with keeping indoor plants watered consistently.... but as we are now successfully using wicks to water our plants we thought we would go with a similar system; a self-watering propagator. The theory being that the capillary matting draws water out of the tray and into the mini propagators.
It is all set up and ready to go and we have already chosen a few seeds to start - basil, 'cut and come again' salad and sweet peas. Things that we know we can start now, sticking with the principle that we only choose things that we use. The soil in the propagators is looking a little wet so we are waiting for them to dry a little prior to planting the seeds. Well, we hope that they dry a little, otherwise this self-watering principle may not be the way to go as all we shall have are some rotten seeds. We will see. If it is a success..... we have another nine windows!
Over the past few years we have purchased our partially grown veg from our local garden centre and planted out a month later than most people would. That, as we have come to learn, is the way our climate works here.... we work a month late on everything. Even when Monty Don was telling us to take out our old tomato plants we were still harvesting a ton of ripe fruits. It got us thinking..... if we could grow and acclimatise our own plants to the environment, we may stand a better chance of planting early and maximising our season.
We lack anywhere warm in these here hills to start growing from seed. We currently don't [but hope to] have a greenhouse (let alone a heated one) or conservatory and our porch is an unheated wooden shed waiting to blow down in a gale. There was no hope of doing anything on a large scale but we thought, starting small, we would see if it would be possible to extend our growing period. The problem being that we struggle with keeping indoor plants watered consistently.... but as we are now successfully using wicks to water our plants we thought we would go with a similar system; a self-watering propagator. The theory being that the capillary matting draws water out of the tray and into the mini propagators.
It is all set up and ready to go and we have already chosen a few seeds to start - basil, 'cut and come again' salad and sweet peas. Things that we know we can start now, sticking with the principle that we only choose things that we use. The soil in the propagators is looking a little wet so we are waiting for them to dry a little prior to planting the seeds. Well, we hope that they dry a little, otherwise this self-watering principle may not be the way to go as all we shall have are some rotten seeds. We will see. If it is a success..... we have another nine windows!