Early Potatoes in grow sacks.

So, you want to grow potatoes but have no space...so what do you do?

You grow spuds in bags or pots, thats what!

To get an earlier crop of yummy new potatos I planted these in Feb, on a waning moon. If you have a sheltered place you will get an earlier crop by doing this, up to 4 weeks earlier. Mmmmm new potatoes and butter




Take the potato bag ( could be an old compost bag, it does not have to be a special potato growing bag - as long as it excludes the light it will work!)
  and place a layer of drainage material such as small stones on the bottom of the bag. Place the bag where it will grow until harvesting the potatoes , as you do not want to move it around once you have planted the bag with seed potatoes and growing medium ( it will be heavy and moving the bag will not be of benefit to the growing spuds)

 Add around 15 cm of good quality peat free growing medium. On top of this layer place 4 seed potatoes, equally spaced out and around 15cm from the edge of the bag



Add another 10 cm layer of good quality growing medium. You can then add  another 2 or 3 seed potatoes on top of this layer, if you wish. If you do, cover them with another 10 cm of growing medium.

• Place the potato bag in sheltered sunny spot and as the green shoots emerge cover with more growing medium to hide the tips of the shoots, until the bag is filled to the top and the potatoe foliage grows out of the top of the bag.

• Make sure there is a always a good covering of soil on the top of growing tubers, as daylight turns the potatoes green, and they are then poisonous and must NOT be eaten.
• If you want your potatoes to have enough space to grow to a decent size don’t plant more than 5 potatoes per bag
• On cold nights cover the bag with some protective fleece to prevent frost damage. I grow my very early potatoes inside my Polytunnel.
• Water well – around a gallon of water per plant per day is recommended when the full foliage is present.
• When the tops of the plants begin to grow, use canes to support them.
• When flower buds begin to appear it is a sign that the tubers are starting to swell.You might want to use some comfrey fertiliser or other organic treatment to nourish the growing tubers at this stage.
• Harvest after around 10 – 12 weeks.

This method also works for all other potatoes later in the season.

Eat fresh and enjoy!

Growing Broad Beans (Fava Beans) or French or Runner Beans

Broad beans are very frost hardy and will germinate in a soil temperature as low as 2°C (35°F). You could have sown them in the autumn, but I don’t as the mice always eat them if I do! I sow mine in pots/tubes in Feb or early March and then plant out good sized plants in March or early April. You can also sow the seed direct around mid March, if the soil is warm enough.

A good indication that it is ok to sow hardy seeds is if the grass has started to grow, the soil temperature will be above 5-6 degrees centigrade and you can sow/plant hardier seeds direct in the ground, or plant out tubers such as potatoes.

BUT IF you have a heavy clay soil wait! Seeds sown in wet or cold soil tend to rot and die. Waiting for a few more weeks won’t hurt.

A black or clear plastic covering over soil will warm it up, so you can sow some seeds a little earlier than usual. Spread plastic sheeting over the areas where you plan to sow the seeds. Weigh down the sides so it can't blow away in winter winds. After 3 - 4 weeks, the soil should be warm enough for seed sowing.

I use big sheets of Geotextile ( weed sheet) which we have a huge roll of, so we have 4 sheets which cover the 4 plots in the veg garden all winter. We turn them back to let the weed seeds geminate, then cover the weeds up to kill them off!



I soak my beans for a few hours to soften the cases and make it easier for the seed to germinate.



I put the tubes in old, broken seed modules (to help support them) standing in a gravel tray (like a seed tray but with no holes) and fill them to within an inch of the top with peat free growing medium. I then put a bean in each tube



and fill the tube to the top with growing medium



I label the trays ( so I know which is which!)



water them well (be gentle, you don't want to over water!)



and cover them with a clear lid, mainly to keep off the mice, but also it adds a bit of warmth in the polytunnel....if you have a cool windowsil that would be fine.

These will have grown leaves within a couple of weeks and will be rerady to plant out by the end of March (if the weather is OK)

For those of you who are interested, I planted these on a waxing moon in the second quarter.

I use the same technique (seeds in pots /tubes) for Runner and French beans a bit later on in the year!

Growing Parsnips

Although Parsnips can withstand cold weather, they are notoriously slow to germinate and in practice I have found it better to wait and sow in March when it is warmer.

Parsnips like rich, slightly heavy soil, well dug but NOT recently manured (as, like carrots, they will fork if the soil is TOO rich)

As soon as you can dig the bed over and produce a fine tilth, the conditions are fine for planting parsnip seed in the ground ( if the weather allows you to get a fine tilth, its warm and dry enough!)

Parsnips take a long time to grow BUT you can get a worthwhile crop even if they are sown in late spring. MAKE SURE you use fresh this year seed, because parsnip seeds do not keep well. If you HAVE to use last years seed, pre sprout it to check for viability ( put on damp kitchen paper and watch it sprout, then snip the paper up so a bit has a sprouted seed on it and then plant the paper)



Follow the instruction on the seed packet about how/where to sow, and you may as well be generous as the seed doesn't keep well....

I plant some outside but at least half of my parsnips are planted in loo roll tubes

Lightly cover the seeds with more growing medium and water well.

Transplant into their final position in the ground AS SOON as the seed has germinated ...If you leave it too long the tap root emerges from the bottom of the tube and, when transplanted, may be damaged. This won't hurt the plant BUT you will get a smaller, forked root!



So, make sure you have the parsnip bed ready for planting, if you decide to follow the "tube" idea!

Growing tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.

(This is a revised version of a post I first published in 2009 on how I plant seeds and things)

As I said in my last post I have been planting seeds in the porch recently. Raising plants to transplant outdoors (or under cloches or in a greenhouse/ tunnel) gives you a head start on the season. It is simple to provide extra warmth for a few pots and trays of seeds - in a warm room, or on a heated bench for example.

But remember - the seedlings that appear will also need some warmth and good light levels, until they can be moved to a frost free final position, so allow for where you are going to keep them. This is especially the case with pepper, tomato and aubergine plants as they will need a warm place to live!

I have had a lot of success with putting moderate sized tomato plants inside a cold frame inside an unheated polytunnel during March/April and this would work just as well inside a conservatory or a plastic small greenhouse I think.

I have recently been sowing tomatoes, sweet peppers and aubergine (egg plant for US friends) seeds in modules which have been germinating in my heated propagators in the porch. The porch is double glazed but unheated so can get cold at night! It is west facing though so gets the sun in the afternoon and makes a good place to set up "mission control" seed growing central!




I now have 3 electric heated propagators, each of which will hold 4 of the 6 celled seed modules. I have slowly gathered these over the last 20 years, they ARE expensive and I had two as gifts and the third was a sale bargain as it had a slightly damaged lid (!) BUT they are invaluable to me to help raise early plants, as I do not (YET) have a greenhouse to do this in. ( I have a greenhouse in BITS, and have had it for 8 years but it is not yet put together in a usable condition..maybe next year?)

I sow the sweet peppers and aubergine seeds first as they take longer to germinate than tomatoes (the peppers especially) I usually can move the seedlings out of the heated propagators and into unheated mini greenhouse trays after 15 days or so, and then I can sow more seeds in modules and put them in the empty space in the propagator...

I also sow herbs and salad seeds in unheated mini greenhouse windowsill trays and they give me an early start to the summer salads!

I do have salads over winter in the polytunnel BUT we don't tend to want to eat much salad in the winter in our household!


Sweet Pepper seeds






Sow on surface of growing medium them cover with about as much growing medium as the length of the seed.



Label



Water




and place in heated propagator,




seed germinated in 9 days...if in unheated propagator ( tray with some sort of cover) it will take longer...)




I have been sowing recently inside in my heated propagator in the same way as the pepper seeds, tomato, hot pepper and aubergine (egg plant)seeds.


Tomatoes/Peppers/Aubergines - for growing on in a cold greenhouse or tunnel (NOT OUTSIDE!!)
sown during the Feb waxing moon.