Planting Nuts

You may know that last year I successfully grew an almond from seed, and it has been dormant and covered with a fleecy blanket since Autumn.  I am worried that because it was so "young" it may not survive the winter if we do in fact get a lasting snowfall at some point.  So I am planting several more just in case.  I thought while I was at it I'd give a few other nuts a go too - cashews and pine nuts.

So the first thing to do if you are planting nuts is to soak them for a minimum of 24 hours, stored in the fridge.  I left mine for 3 days, mostly because I was too busy to pot them up.  This does two things - causes the nut to swell, which aids germination, and fools the nut into a false sense of winter, meaning when you remove from the fridge and plant them, it thinks spring has arrived.

This cashew has swollen to almost twice the size after soaking

I decided to plant 2 under the surface, and experiment with one partially out of the soil. (or vermiculite)

I expect the shoot will appear from the dark spot on the top of the seed.

Cashews are really supposed to be planted in a warmer climate so honestly this is really an experiment - I'm not expecting much success.  I'll be keeping them indoors for a while to see if anything happens.

On an unrelated note, do you reckon I need to plant my onion sets out soon? Haha.

Starting Seeds!!

Growing tip of Inca Berry bush

With all the craziness of life of late, I've sorely missed gardening.  This made worse by the never-ending rain and single snowfall since Christmas.  So I was thrilled when mid-February rocked around so I can finally get started sowing some of the million seeds I have been accumulating over the past six months.

The most exciting for me is probably the chillis.  This year I have really gone all out when deciding on varieties to try.  We eat chillis in every meal, so really I am thrilled to have an entire propagator devoted to them.

This is also my new propagator I got from Suttons - it's meant to make it easier to remove the seedlings without damaging the roots.  I'll let you know how it goes on that front.  Last year I had issues with a capillary mat propagator where the roots grew through the mat, often before the seedling emerged to a point where it could be handled properly, so there was a lot of damage when getting them out.

I may have gone a bit overboard in my excitement at being able to sow some seeds...

Setting the seeds out before they're covered up

So here is my list of what's been sown thus far:

Chillis

• Nosferatu (thanks for the seed Mark!)
• De Cayenne
• Purple Flash
• Cayenne Apache
• Habanero Black Stinger
• Scotch Bonnet Big Sun
• Black Pearl
• Numex Pinata
• Capsicum Calico
• Numex Twilight (Thanks again Mark)

Sweet Peppers

• Mohawk
• Organic Nardello
• Bellboy
• Worldbeater

Tomatoes

• Purple Calabash
• Great White
• Peardrops (trailing)
• Black Russian
• Reinhard's Goldkirsche
• Roma
• Health Kick
• Red Cherry
• Green Giant
• Golden Sunrise
• Green Zebra
• Oxheart
• Moneymaker
• White Queen

Cucumbers

• Perfection
• Marketmore

Courgettes

• Black Beauty Dark Fog
• Organic Nero Di Milano
• Early Gem
• Piccolo

Squash

• White Bush Marrow 
• Vegetable Spaghetti
• Black Futsu
• Cornell's Delicata
• Sweet Dumpling
• Butternut
• Crown Prince
• Honeybear

Aubergine

• Black Beauty

Broad Beans

• Super Aquadulce
• Masterpiece Green Longpod
• Sutton Dwarf

Melon

• Watermelon Crimson Sweet

Herbs

• Russian Comfrey
• Thai Basil
• Black Cumin
• Cumin
• Coriander
• Green Mint
• Marigold (I know not strictly a herb but its in with them haha)
• Lovage
• Sweet Marjoram

Radishes

• Cherry Belle
• Summer Cross (Mooli)

These were all planted 19th February.  You may think this is a little early for some of these, but we are going on holiday for the last two weeks of March and I wanted to be able to re-pot seedlings before we go preferably, rather than them come up while we're away when I can't look after them.

This year is very much an experimental year for my veg garden.  I haven't grown most of theses varieties before so its exciting to try them out and see what I like and what new tastes I can discover!  And this is just February's planting! 

Here's a wee look at the greenhouse right now.  Mostly fleeced chillis overwintering and a bunch of thriving strawberry plants

Please excuse the floor and pallet mess - the floor was never finished by the previous tenant in our house and I was too anxious to get started to get it finished properly last year.  Maybe this year will be the year it gets done!

Those luscious green plants who haven't yet realised it's winter are my Inca berries, who have grown without issue throughout the winter and have thrived on my lack of watering neglect throughout my busy work life.  Well done Inca Berries!!

Lovely big leaves soaking up the sun

Since this will be their second year I hope to see some fruiting going on soon!

Another plant that already seems to have decided winter is over is my Goji berry.  

Blackcurrant is starting to produce some lovely pink/purple buds!

This will be the second year for my blackcurrant and my goji berry plants, so I'm hoping for some fruit this summer.  We'll see!!  I bought them as small plants from Sainsbury's last spring and they've come a long, long way since.  Particularly the goji, who I'm convinced is trying to grow tall enough to escape the garden over the fence.

That black area is not rot or fungus, I'd just been handling rather a lot of soil and was holding the top of the plant while I examined the buds

As I was out in the greenhouse today I could really feel the warm sun on my back.  The days are getting warmer, and the rain and winds are dying down a bit.  It really does feel like winter never really quite got here, and spring really does seem round the corner.  Which means there will be more seed sowing to show you soon!