Back to Basics - Sowing Seeds for Square Foot Gardening - Leeks

Sowing Seeds for the Square Foot Garden - Leeks

Hi everyone,

We'd be crazy to think that Winter is over and Spring is on the way, this week in the UK we're expecting sleet, snow and temperatures barely above freezing. However it is possible to get some seeds sown right now, lets get going with some leeks for the Square Foot Garden.

In this video we're sowing Sutton Seeds Leek Lyon Prizetaker. One packet contains on average 300 seeds for just £1.55 (that's less than 1 penny per leek!), as opposed to approximately £2.50 for 1 kilo of loose leeks from the supermarket, and money can't buy the fun involved in growing your own fruit and vegetables.

So here we go, the first in a back-to basics guide to grow your own.

Enjoy!
Love
Rebecca xx

Spring Gardening - it's a busy time of year

Spring Gardening - Ornamentals

The Woodland Garden brings me so much joy in Spring. It's always been the main attraction at this time of year. Being at the front of the house, it welcomes me home from a tough day at work, or sends me out into the world with a smile on my face.

I bulked out my tulip collection quite a bit last autumn, keeping purple and whites, but adding pink and extending the season with different varieties

The Wood Anemones (Anemone nemorosa) are really starting to spread under the trees. I love the way they bask in the spring sunshine. Last autumn I felt the two clumps I had were big enough to start dividing, so with a trowel I took small sections off the outsides and planted them straight out in their new positions. I kept my fingers crossed for them all winter, and was delighted a few weeks ago to see how well they had settled in.

If you look closely, you'll also see the ridiculous number of sycamore seedlings I have to weed out - grump grump grump :(

Speaking of Anemones, the first of my Anemone coronaria (Garden Anemone) have come into bloom this week. They look electric here against the lime green leaves of the Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia).

Late last summer I dug up my bearded irises, as the clumps were getting huge and needed invigorating. I broke off all the old or diseased rhizomes, trimmed down the leaves to approximately 10cm and potted the healthy rhizomes up into individual pots. These have been stored in the greenhouse over winter, and once I started to see green growth, I cut off all the old dead leaves and began watering them. This has worked really well, and I've just started planting them back out into the Woodland Garden in full sun.

In the greenhouse, spring sown Sweet Peas are growing well, they have been pinched out to encourage strong stocky growth, and have been potted once once already.

Spring Gardening - Edibles

There's lots going on in the edibles department too.

I've learnt over the 7 or 8 years I've worked my garden that there is absolutely no point direct sowing seeds in it. Early in the year they don't get enough heat or light, and the slugs are very active. The death rate is too high. I'm far better off sowing into modules or pots, and getting things growing well in the greenhouse or on the kitchen windowsill. Then I can plant out strong healthy plants which can withstand the slugs better, plus the weather and soil will be a little warmer.

Greenhouse bench - mid-April 2017
Photo by Pumpkin Becki

I sowed my first batch of Broad Beans (var. De Monica) early last month. They've been potted on once into 15cm square pots, and yesterday I planted them out into the square foot beds. In the meantime I've also sown some The Sutton and Masterpiece Green Longpod, which are just showing their heads above soil.

I apply the same system to onion sets as well. For me it's more reliable to pop sets into modules, let them get growing and then plant them out once they have formed 10-15cm long leaves.

I'm not having much luck with peas so far, they just won't germinate, but then lots of my seeds are very old, so I may have to start again with new seed.

I bought some parsnip plug plants, which went out into the square foot beds, but I will also sow some seeds of my own.

Leeks germinated well and are already 6-7cm tall.

I have pricked out my young chilli plants and put them next to my tomato seedlings on the kitchen window sill.

I have bought some young tomato plants as well, as an insurance policy, two orange sweet pepper (capsicum) plants, and a grafted aubergine plant. I have had great success with grafted aubergines for the last two years, so it was a no-brainer when I spotted one at B&Q last night.

I've put all these beauties on the bench in the greenhouse to grow on a bit.
Hope your season is going well too, let me know in the comments xx

What a stunning weekend!

Wow, the weather has been fabulous this weekend, so I made the most of it in the garden and at the lottie. 

Saturday afternoon I took down the 'summer' baskets from the front of the house. They really were on their last legs! The baskets have a coir liner, which I have then lined with a piece of compost bag with holes poked in the bottom. This time I cleared out the old plants and scraped out about half the compost, but left the ivy and liner in place.



Then I added fresh compost, and planted up two colours of pansy and two white ericas into each one. Then gave the ivy a bit of a haircut.

 

...not bad! And a darn site tidier than the remnants of the summer baskets that's for sure!!

  

Today, the weather continued to be fine, infact it was even better, as the strong breezes from yesterday had dropped right down. I took the opportunity to pop up to the lottie and plant out my onion sets and shallots. Normally I miss that window of warm dry weather, the Autumn rain sets in and it becomes too wet to plant them out. I end up having to wait until quite late in the year before doing this and the little bulbs sulk in the cold wet soil until the spring, so I am really chuffed that I timed it so well this year. I wore a fleece to walk up to the allotment, but once I arrived I decided it was t-shirt weather. Here's the lottie in the middle of a tidy up... I pulled up the remaining broad bean stalks and supports from bed 1 (in the foreground). Gave it a jolly good weeding , dug it over a bit and then applied Blood, Fish and Bonemeal.

I lightly dug this in and then planted out Shallot Jermor and Golden Gourmet, and 50 Onion Radar sets. Bed 2 got a similar treatment once I had pulled up the last of the pumpkin and squash vines, and here I planted out 100 Shensyu onion sets. I also hacked back a bit of the horseradish foliage (the big green blob in the middle of the picture). The leaves will die back naturally soon, but I needed to get a bit more light to the beetroot growing just to the side of the horseradish. I think we'll have to lift and divide the horseradish as its just a bit too happy where it is, it may try to take over the world soon!! I also applied a dressing of blood, fish and bone to my seriously pathetic leeks! I thought that the recent rain would have really got them off to a flying start, but they've made very little progress in the last month and are still no thicker than a pencil. I had a similar problem last year too.  Last year I bought plantlets of 'Autumn Giant' (phah, that's a joke!) from Sutton Seeds. This year a kind neighbour donated about 100 young Musselburg plants to me.  I just hope the extra feed will get them going again, otherwise I'm at a bit of a loss.