My green fingers have been itching to get sowing for weeks now and patience certainly isn’t my virtue. But I have just about managed to restrain myself from going grow mad! There is only so many times you can organise and admire your new seed packets before you cave.

My first sowings were of Sweetpeas and Broad Beans. The varieties of both I’m unsure of as the sweetpeas were a harvested seed, which just had ‘Sweetpeas’ on the seed envelope and the Broad Beans I got with my Rocket Gardens Winter garden box because last year I was pretty rubbish in my organisation – That’s not me saying this year is going to be any better, I’d hate to make ridiculous expectations for myself. The way I garden is relaxed and laid back, so laid back it’s almost horizontal, but that’s how nature works it just goes with the flow. Why get stressed about having to sow this and that at this date, just do what feels right and when you have the time. We stress so much in our everyday lives  we don’t need to add to it, heck we garden to chill our boots!

So that was off on a tangent, back to the agenda!  The Sweetpeas and Broadbeans are off to a great start and are thriving well, in fact I think the sweetpeas are ready to be pinched out to encourage an extra bushy growth and I will do this again in a few weeks to ensure I have strong bountiful plants.

Broad Beans I used to sow in November for my early crop but mice of moles and voles would swipe them every time, so I resorted to Modules and found that the plants sat in cells until spring started to lack in nutrients and the result was weaker plants. So now I wait until January where it helps the itchy fingers in the new growing year but also means I get strong plants off to a flying start, as every seed wants to thrive and I find growing the beans in January indoors in my porch gives me super strong plants for planting out in March.

Last week I began sowing the Solanum family – this is me putting my horticulture course to use and using the genus and feeling clever about it. This in everyday gardening terms is me saying I sowed Tomatoes, Chillies, Peppers and Aubergines. I have a few varieties that I have decided to grow this year, these are my chosen ones!

• Tomato – Golden Sunrise
• Tomato – Tigerella
• Tomato – Ailsa Craig
• Tomato – Black Russian
• Tomato – Purple Ukraine
• Tomato – Red Cherry
• Tomato – Red Pear
• Tomato – Big Mamma
• Tomato – Super Marmande
• Tomato – Principe Borghese
• Aubergine –  Mixed
• Aubergine –  Black Beauty
• Chilli – Chenzo
• Chilli – Hoy De Cayenne
• Pepper – Sweet  Doux très long des Landes
• Pepper – Sweet Chocolate
• Pepper – (Sweet) Colour Spectrum

And then to finish off I thought I would sow some Lupins – Festival Mixed,  Cauliflower – All the Year Round, Cabbage – Golden Acre and some Mixed Lettuce Leaves seen as were in a lettuce crisis right now. Although I have some lovely corn salad that has over wintered lovely and are now being protected by my new amazing cloches from Lavender & Leeks. I’m going to be buying a couple more of these I think they are so sturdy, great quality and very reasonably priced too.

So there we are, the beginnings of 2017 for plot 34B . Have you started growing yet?

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Thanks for stopping by!

Bo xx