A welcome sight - in more ways than one!

We visited the plot yesterday to gather some vegetables as our stocks were getting low. We actually were quite pleased with our haul that Martyn posted a photo of on his blog here and were relieved to see that despite the gales we had suffered no damage.

One sight to uplift the spirits and tease me into thinking spring may just be around the corner was this.

A really wild start!

Well the New Year has been off to a wild start and not in the party sense. If you have read Martyn's blog you will know that we have been kept busy righting bird tables and collecting other people's rubbish from our garden.

The wind has been worse during the night which has meant a lack of sleep resulting in bleary eyes and a foggy head in the morning but I'm not complaining too loudly as compared to some areas we have got off lightly! I hope all of you in the UK and your possessions are still in one piece. Just hope the plot has survived!

Being confined to indoors has at least meant we have managed to complete our 2012 seed order and send it off.

We are more or less confining ourselves to four seed companies, Kings (because as NSALG members we get a large discount), Thompson & Morgan, Plants of Distinction - Simply Vegetables and Marshalls. Kings don't have all the varieties that we want!

Lots of seeds ordered are the same varieties as last year - any that didn't do well are being given a second chance as last year was hardly a fair test. Our Carouby de Maussane mangetouts were a disaster but it was a poor pea year for us generally so it is on this year's list too.

A new vegetable for this year is Lettuce - Little Gem Dazzle which has red tinged leaves. Another is cabbage - Candissa which can also be used as a mini vegetable but grows to about 1kg in weight when fully mature.

We are adding to our pepper varieties (no not chillies Mark!). The varieties are Planet which is a long pepper, that is supposedly very sweet and easy to grow, and Palladio which is said to be the yellow counterpart to Planet

Two new (to us) tomatoes are Jakarta - a beefsteak variety and San Marzano a variety we acquired as a magazine freebie which will be a tester for growing tomatoes outdoors next year - no doubt blight will see them off but who knows? We also have a free packet of carrot - St. Valery which is supposed to be an exhibition carrot - we'd just like it to produce some edible carrots! We'll leave exhibiting to Damo.

We are also going to try yet again to grow celery and celeriac. Success with both of these has so far alluded us so any tips (are you there Kelli?) will be most welcome! We're trying celery - Victoria, a self blanching variety reputed to grow in places that are 'traditionally' difficult and celeriac - Giant Prague - the catalogue says celeriac is easy to grow as long as it is sown early and kept constantly moist. We will see if either or both these claims are born out.

We are also growing aubergines which we don't usually, they haven't really been fruitful for us, but a friend has a packet of seeds - Black Beauty -  that he doesn't want so we may as well give it another go.

After last year's disappointment with the winter vegetable plants we are going to grow from seed this year and have chosen, broccoli - White Sprouting early and Red Arrow, cauliflower - Aalsmeer.

I was going to add the potatoes and flowers to this post but I think it's gone on for long enough so I'll keep these for later.

Our full vegetable seed list can be viewed here

New Year - New Challenge

I've have had a clivia growing in a pot in the house for years now.

It's a bit temperamental in that some years it will produce a flower and other years it won't. Generally it doesn't really get any special treatment and is left to do it's own thing. I often forget to even water it.

Then last year I noticed that when the flower heads dropped a couple of green seed pods were left behind. I decided to leave these on the plant to see what happened. I expected that the seed pod would probably dry or do something to let me know that the seeds were ripe.

Well after what seemed like ages - well it was ages apparently the seed pod takes up to 10 months to ripen - last month the seed pods decided to turn a seasonal reddish orange.

Then the weekend before Christmas one of the seed pods fell off which I took to be a sign that if there were any seeds inside they ought to be ripe.

I opened up the seed pod to find three very large fat seeds.

I took the seeds out of the pod and cleaned up all the soft membrane from around them, rinsed them and left them to dry and then I popped them into a pot of compost.

I then decided, a bit belatedly, to try and look up on the Internet how to grow clivias from seed. Oh dear I'd done something - well in fact two or three things wrong.

Apparently it is really important which way the seed is planted - there is a brownish area on one side of the seed and this has to be pointing sideways. I'd never noticed any brown patch so I went upstairs to where I had left the seeds and promptly removed the seeds from the compost. Sure enough there was a brown area on each seed.

I also read that the seeds had to be just pressed into the compost and left uncovered - I'd previously pushed them into the soil and covered them - I thought being large seeds that would be necessary - so now they are just pushed level with the top of the soil as instructed.

Now apparently I have to pop them in a plastic bag in a shady, warm place - (and I was going to pop them under the growing light) and wait up to three weeks or maybe far longer (information varies considerably on this) to see whether they will germinate and if they do I'll be amazed.

If in the unlikely event that they do germinate, it can take up to four years for a new plant to flower! If I'm still blogging then I'll let you know how things turn out. 

There is another smaller seed pod on the plant so if that seems to contain viable seeds I may even plant them correctly the first time round or I may try one of the other methods suggested - yes just to make life even more difficult different people seem to have different ideas as to how the seeds should be started off! 

I thought growing cyclamen was a challenge but now this is in another league!

And to finish - a really Happy New Year to Everyone - here's hoping for a season that is not too wet but not too dry, not too hot but not too cold and not too windy and ...