First seeds of 2013

So I've sowed my first seeds of 2013. This year I've been doing quite a bit of reading about gardening in general and what I should be doing when. I'm trying very hard not to get too excited about all the new found space we have and keep things relatively simple and so for this year we have decided not to do too much with the main portion of the garden and keep all of our vegetable growing within hanging baskets and pots on the patio. This should mean we're able to have a lot more growing space than we have done in previous years but will hopefully not be such a big step up that we're overwhelmed by everything we have to do and have too much to learn.

Cocktail stick labels for my seedlings ready to go

Therefore, again with the seeds for this year we've stuck with only buying ones which are recommended for containers although we have allowed ourselves some bigger crops (such as sweetcorn, courgette and squash!) than we've previously had on the windowsill. I'm also keen to get a herb garden established so we've bought a selection of herb seeds.

First set of seeds planted and labelled up with sowing date

Last Monday I set about sowing the first set. In my reading I'd seen that it is recommended that rather than sow all of your seeds at once you sow over successive weeks to spread out your harvest better throughout the year and so taking this into account I started with just sowing a couple of each of the seeds. I still had some seeds left over from last year (aubergines, caldero chillies, a packet of Wahaca chilli seeds that I'd picked up at some point along the way) so I shoved them in some seed compost to see if they'll do anything and then I started to plant up a few of the seeds that I've bought for this year so planted some red and yellow tumbling tomatoes, chervil, rosemary and thyme. I've read that it's really hard to get rosemary and thyme to germinate so fingers crossed!

Thyme seeds planted - fingers crossed they germinate!

We also no longer have our lovely dining table sitting in a south facing window just perfect for germinating seeds that we had in the flat so I've resorted to using the bed in the spare room having protected the mattress with a dust sheet and put a couple of spare table tops on top of it. The window is west facing which is the best I can do so we'll see how it goes...

Using the bed in the spare room as a surface for seedlings!

Seeds!

I have just ordered my seeds for the 2012 windowboxes. I am slightly later this year than I have been for the past two but hoping that this won't cause any problems... As some of you will be aware one of my "30 before 30" for this year is to grow an aubergine on the windowsill. This may be a tall order but I'm hoping that I'll be able to do it. The variety that I have gone for is the dwarf "Ophelia" plant. Fingers crossed they like sunny spots and will thrive on the windowsill. Only time will tell. To go alongside the aubergines I've gone for another newby to the windowsill - the dwarf runner bean "Hestia" and last but not least I have the old favourites which have done very well both years - tumbling tomatoes and some chilli seeds (another new variety of chilli this year - going to try Caldero).

Now just got to sit back and wait for them to arrive in the post!

New Year, New Post

Well I haven't blogged in a long while and things on the windowsill have been moving pretty slowly but we do have movement and the leaves, spring onions and garlic that I planted back in November are all plodding away nicely. The growth rate is considerably slower than it was for the plants that were out in the windowboxes over the summer but for such little plants they do seem to have coped remarkably well with all of the snow they've been bombarded with!

Here's the first pictures of how the windowsill is doing in 2011...


Our three garlic bulbs have all sprouted...



...our spring onions have sprung...



...and our winter leaves are looking strong (although I'm not sure we've got enough for a salad!!)

Out with the old and in with the new!

Well over the weekend I took the opportunity to do some tidying up and armed with all of your suggestions from the other week headed off to the garden centre in search of some winter windowsill produce. I managed to get hold of some garlic, winter salad leaves, sping onions and cos lettuces which all said that they were ok to be planted at this time of year and I also picked up some cress and mustard too to keep me busy.

When I got back I spent some time pottering around and cleared out one of the windowsills where all of the former tomato plants were dead (I have left a little clump of oregano which was clinging on for dear life in the hope that it is going to revive itself) and in their place I have planted a row of the winter leaves and a row of the spring onions. It didn't mention anything on the label about starting them off inside so I have just planted them straight into the windowbox outside (not sure if this was a good idea or not!?!). Then I also removed the chilli plant which had only produced one short fat chilli and have planted three cloves of garlic in its place. Am looking forward to seeing whether anything sprouts or not!



I've left the other two windowboxes for the time being - one of them is still bursting with chillies and to keep them fresh I don't want to be picking them until we need them and the other one has lots of tomatoes that are a yellowish colour at the moment so I'm clinging on in the vain hope that they might turn red for me some day soon. I've also left the pot of mint in place and tidied it up removing all of the dead stalks and it's sprung back to life amazingly!

Sweet peppers on the way

I think that I've got two little sweet peppers on the way!! I can't be sure as having never grown sweet peppers before I'm not sure what they're supposed to look like but the sweet pepper plant that went out on the windowsill two weeks ago now appears to have two little green bulbous nodules in the place of where flowers once were.

Exciting times out on the windowsill indeed!

Not too cold for the peppers and chillies!

Well I had resigned myself to the fact that we weren't going to get any germinating chillies or peppers because we hadn't made it warm enough for them.

When we had planted the seed tray up we hadn't realised that people normally either place them on radiators or under propagating lamps to get them to germinate and hence had planted them with a row of tomatoes in between. However, lo and behold, this morning when I went to check the tray we've got a little pepper plant and three chillies that have all come up at the same time!

In other news it appears that one of the sunflowers that was drooping yesterday has started to fight back a little but the another one has begun to wilt. So now we've got two healthy sunflowers and three that are not looking so good. Today we will pot them up!