Seed sowing thread 2021

[Jungle Jane]

Yesterday two varieties of lettuce ‘Warpath’ & ‘Gustav's salad’.

[Snoop Puss]

Bacle climbing French beans. Not what I meant to grow but they're what came home with Mr Snoop. And as it's never advisable to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it's brought home by your husband, I'll give them a go.

Sweet Sahara mangetout and an unnamed sugar snap.

Round one of Challenger sweetcorn. Probably looking to do three rounds in total. Ten now and thirty more.

[MelanieSW]

Sowed 2 more cucumbers, and another courgette and a marrow (fresh seeds).
6 of the previously sown courgettes were rather aged seed, which I don't really expect to germinate anymore

[ameno]

Put a load of french beans on damp paper to sprout:

-16 Pea Bean
-16 Shield Figure
-12 Canadian Wonder
-16 Cobra (first lot just rotted, so I bought new seeds)

[Snoop Puss]

Yesterday: Hurst Green Shaft peas in modules. Normally I sow peas direct, but this is a rodent year, so it seemed prudent.

[Plot70]

We had rats and they took two and a half boxes of pink clammy tea bag bate before they stopped.
It is not easy to stop rats from damaging seeds.
One of my plot neighbours spotted one walking as it was drunk. He put a cage trap inffont of it and it just walked in and died.

[Plot70]

I have been accused of growing triffids on a window ledge.
It is dwarf and runner beans. There is even a runner bean that turned over while it was germinating that has still produced a viable seedling.
They are in a mixture of clay and horse manure with some stony stuff that was in the back garden before I dug it up for growing in.
It is not "posh" seedling compost but it works for me. They are going to have to go into a cooler place with more light before they get too leggy.

[Snoop Puss]

We had rats and they took two and a half boxes of pink clammy tea bag bate before they stopped

Can you explain the tea bag thing? We have cats and dogs plus assorted visiting owls and assorted other birds of prey, so I'm not about to use poison. But tea bags? They sound acceptable.

[ameno]

I have been accused of growing triffids on a window ledge.
It is dwarf and runner beans. There is even a runner bean that turned over while it was germinating that has still produced a viable seedling.
They are in a mixture of clay and horse manure with some stony stuff that was in the back garden before I dug it up for growing in.
It is not "posh" seedling compost but it works for me. They are going to have to go into a cooler place with more light before they get too leggy.

It doesn't matter which way up beans (or indeed most seeds) are; they'll still germinate just fine. Indeed, children even do experiments with bean seeds in order to try and "trick" them, by growing them in damp tissue or cotton wool and then turn them over part way through germination, and they always right themselves just fine (it's a good demonstration of geotropism).

Also, I notice you just have all you beans together in one tray. Do you just plant them more or less bare root when you come to planting them out?

[Chestnut]

Lettuce, spring onions, PSB, sunflowers, outdoor cucumbers, celeriac, rapini and savoys.

[Plot70]

The beans are in modules that are standing in brown mushroom trays. They all come apart before planting.
The rat poison is packaged in things that look like pink tea bags and they feel clammy when you put them in the bate station.
My bate station is under a large tool shed in the door step and so far only one poisoned rat has come out from under there again.
If the rest begin to smell I will rake them out and land fill them.

[ameno]

Potted some sprouted French bean seeds. 15 cobra and 16 pea bean.

[Snoop Puss]

Thanks for the info, Plot70. I might pass, though, if it's poison. Maybe I just need more cats... Ours are elderly now and perhaps not up for the hunt as much as they used to be.

[Plot70]

We do have feral cats and they help with the rats.
The main problem is if householders feed them too much so that they get bored and start killing baby birds and digging up seedlings.

[Sweet savory]

Sunflowers and blue kuri to chit. Sowed overnight soaked parsley, PSB Rudolph. To sow today DFB.
Also sowed little gem lettuce as realised had forgotten to sow any lettuce for over 3 weeks so there will be a gap in supply. That’s one of my 2021 resolutions up in smoke.
Have had ordinary Kuri squash chitting for 10 days and they are only now looking like they might actually do something.
Do they usually take that long? Been on a sunny windowsill but kept damp.