Starting from scratch

image from Freepik

As you know, I've had very mixed results growing vegetables.  Starting with plug plants hasn't been as successful as I'd hoped it would be, which has been disappointing to say the least.  Some of the problem is that the plugs are sent by courier and can take days to arrive all the way up here which, of course, does the poor baby plants no good whatsoever.  Another issue is that the season is shorter than it is down south so by the time the plugs have arrived, I've just been running out of enough growing time 😒

This year I decided to take the bull by the horns and have a go growing my veggies from seeds.  Now I must hasten to point out that I have absolutely no experience at all with starting from scratch, so I'm a little apprehensive about how successful I shall be 😳  Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it'll either work or not ~ which to be fair is my usual approach to growing plants anyway 😄

So I had a lovely time on the Marshalls Garden website at the weekend, mooching through all their lovely seeds pretending I knew what I was doing like a proper gardener 😉  I've ordered a variety of vegetables to try out: three varieties of tomatoes, swede, sweetcorn, three varieties of lettuce, sweet pepper, cucumber, carrots, broccoli, beetroot, and three varieties of dwarf French beans.  I also got somewhat carried away with a whole bunch (excuse the pun!) of annual flowers, which I'll try out instead of buying ready-grown bedding plants this year.

Obviously the seed packets have all the information necessary for sowing, growing on, etc, but I've decided to experiment this year by sowing the seeds earlier than suggested.  As I mentioned above, I just run out of time during our shorter growing season up here.  Starting them off earlier will either work or not and if I don't try, I'll never know 🤷 When the seeds arrive (they've apparently been dispatched already which is pretty exciting 👏) I'll sit down and study the packets, then ignore the instructions and draw up my own sowing timetable 😉

Before I get to the dizzying heights of sowing my own seeds, though, I shall have to have a good tidy up in the greenhouse.  I've neglected it all winter and really need to sort out the plants I put in there last autumn.  Some have survived and some haven't but I think it was still worthwhile to try to overwinter them.  My seed potatoes are also out there, quietly chitting away.  Potatoes are something that, touch wood, I have been successful with; I think it helps that I grow in raised beds, so they aren't sitting in really wet soil as the water drains through quite well.

Wish me luck, my lovelies ~ I shall keep you informed of my step-by-step progress!