Getting on with it

After a week or so of cold and frozen ground, the weather has lurched to damp and drizzly and now unseasonably mild. Friends in Germany tell us that the temperature reached 21C, about 70F, where they are – not at all February weather.  The climate seems to be going haywire: there's snow in Athens and Texas, and a heatwave heading for us.  As the end of the month approaches, so too does the start of the growing season, and with more pleasant weather on the way it’s time to get down to work to start off the new season’s plants. 

Most of the seed-sowing will start in March, but there are some jobs to be done earlier. While last year’s seed-sowing was a bit hit-or-miss, there were successes particularly in the veg plot and greenhouse that I’d like to build on this year. 

Among last year's successes were the chard and leaf beet

The early jobs include sowing broad beans, and planting garlic and shallots. Normally I would have done at least some of this back in the autumn, but that didn’t happen this time because of problems with the seed companies. For the past few years I’ve saved garlic cloves and shallots from the previous crop for planting out, but last year’s garlic heads were tiny – probably because I didn’t water them enough in the dry spring – and I decided I would buy a new and more productive variety for this season. The variety I wanted was listed as ‘available soon’ in both the catalogues I usually buy from, but ‘soon’ never happened, and both catalogues are now listing it as ‘available September 2021’. The same thing with the shallots; although the bulbs from the 2020 crop were of a good size I was hoping to try something different, but that variety too never materialised. Is this some manifestation of Brexit (most of these things come in from Europe, but other varieties seemed unaffected), or a crop failure somewhere? Anyway, I finally decided to plant a few of last year’s garlic cloves and shallots out in the garden to give myself a small crop, and wait until September to order some more (is that being too optimistic? If necessary I can buy another variety of each). They went in in early February with some fleece over them, mostly to stop the birds from pulling them up, but it was useful during the freeze. Garlic needs a cold spell to do well, and it certainly had that. The fleece has now been removed and replaced with some plastic netting as the shoots are coming up (a number of the bulbs were already shooting when planted). 

Same with the broad bean planting– my chosen variety has been out of stock for months. Finally, last week, I relented and sowed some of my remaining Superaquadulce seeds in modules in the greenhouse. In any case I’ve never been sure whether it’s worth autumn-sowing broad beans; they don’t seem to crop significantly earlier than those sown in early spring. I’ve also given up sowing direct in the ground, as the germination rate is often poor (eaten by mice?), so a lot of seeds this year will be in toilet-roll-tube modules for planting out (complete with tube, which will break down in the soil). 

One lot of seeds that were sown in autumn were the sweet peas; they have been in the cold frame but have done very poorly, with only a couple of them germinating. There have been signs of disturbance in the pots, though it beats me how a mouse could have got in there. Anyway the spring sowing can be done soon, and I hope they will do rather better! 

The aubergines, peppers and chillies were sown indoors last week and are awaiting germination on the radiator. It’s too early still for the tomatoes, which will in due course be treated in the same way. Some of the early crocus planted in little pots last autumn are coming through, and some self-sown pulmonarias in odd corners are starting to flower – some very welcome colour to herald the spring! 

Crocuses 'Blue Pearl' and 'Cream Beauty'

Pulmonaria flowering quietly by the wall

The birds are also feeling spring-like; a blackbird has been gathering moss and dunking it in the pond to make it nice and muddy for her nest (which is in the long hedge). A pair of robins have been checking out a hole in the fascia of the neighbours’ garage, and a thrush has started singing quietly somewhere nearby.