Lesson to oneself...Sowing seeds...do not...

[moola]

... think that if you repeat the same mistakes you made last year that things will turn out differently. They don't. A darkly lit house will produce leggy unusable seedlings.

DO get your act together. Get the leccy out to the greenhouse and do things properly.

However DO NOT, get all excited and fill up numerous seed trays and then think that you will just remember what's what. You don't.

DO NOT then convince yourself that you were just absent minded and DO THE SAME THING OVER AGAIN!!!! and be left with more trays full of stuff that you're not 100% sure what exactly it is 10 days later.

After a rough start I now have a greenhouse that is filling up with healthy seedlings. The sweetcorn is looking more like sweetcorn but others...well - I guess I'll have to wait. I think there may be some surprises in store

[solway cropper]

But the great thing about growing your own is that you can get all excited and make mistakes. We've all done it and in the end it doesn't really matter. I do try to be organized but I'm not really that kind of person otherwise I might have been an accountant.

[vegnut]

Been there. Done that. And i still slip up now and then. But i must admit, i'm doing it less and less each year LOL.

[geoff]

For a very small financial outlay you can purchase a pen with waterproof ink and small strips of white plastic. Then you can write the mame of the seed on to a strip of the plastic, and place it in the seed tray or pot
This activity is called 'labelling' and is something you might consider

[moola]

For a very small financial outlay you can purchase a pen with waterproof ink and small strips of white plastic. Then you can write the mame of the seed on to a strip of the plastic, and place it in the seed tray or pot
This activity is called 'labelling' and is something you might consider

reckon so !

[womble]

For a very small financial outlay you can purchase a pen with waterproof ink and small strips of white plastic. Then you can write the name of the seed on to a strip of the plastic, and place it in the seed tray or pot
This activity is called 'labelling' and is something you might consider

A pencil works even better and is easier to change the next year, because you will obviously reuse the labels to save on landfill.

[Paulottie]

I sympathise as I am not naturally very organised, perhaps a little idle, and often my time is overstretched.

All part of the rhythms of gardening .... Winter: wash greenhouse, pots, etc. (you can cut up old marge ice- cream tubs for labels) buy sharpie.horto-pencil....Spring, It's all ready there and waiting when you have a million things to do.

One point that worries me however is the leccy. First why is your greenhouse badly sited...you shouldn't need extra light? if it is a heat issue...there are other heaters available. If it is just for propagators surely you can find a spot indoors.

I have one greenhouse with power, insulation etc...It is a great convenience... but it is fairly well set up with a good cable on a support wire and decent sockets and switches that are nicely away from watering and condensation.(these days infact it is illegal to do external electrical work yourself)..... A half unwound extension lead through a window is just fraught with danger.

[HeyWayne]

Isn't it a bit early for sweetcorn too?

I'm holding back this year - but then I think I did that last year, and the year previous. Of course, you then run out of time to do anything.

Where is that middle ground?

[womble]

DO NOT then convince yourself that you were just absent minded and DO THE SAME THING OVER AGAIN!!!! and be left with more trays full of stuff that you're not 100% sure what exactly it is 10 days later.

I'm with Wayne, I always put things off and off.... and always think tomorrow will do to sort it out, then I'm behind and always running to catch up.

It's a very bad inbuilt problem. As I'm sure Bramble Killer and a few others will tell you, I do have good intentions

At least you get trays of stuff, even if you're not sure exactly what they are.

[snohare]

If it's going in the greenhouse, I'd use pencil rather than pen, regardless of how permanent the marker ink is supposed to be it is likely to fade in the bright summer sunlight (which we now all believe we are going to get since that article in the Grauniad ) and heat you get in a greenhouse. Personally I get old slatted blinds and cut them up with scissors for markers - the metal ones last for years.
You could always mark the bench with where the different plants are going to go...or make a plan on a piece of paper of where you have put the different seedlings' trays...but you can't do that now you're confuddled and besides, you'd lose the sheet of paper (well, I always do). So it looks as if like me, you are going to become very good at working out what the different species look like as seedlings...and you're not going to click on "images" and type the name into google, are you, 'cos that would be cheating !

[gojiberry]

Wonder what the percentages are on organised and disorganised gardeners are. I am definitely in the disorganised half though I do get a bit better each year. I think I have (so far) managed to put a label in all my pots and trays this year. And I am also fairly well up on what I want to sow and grow. May be due to the fact that I have not had much work lately.

Ian

[Rabidbun]

I've tried to label everything this year again. Last year I didn't label salad crops - after all, how hard could they be to spot! Ended up not being able to work out which ones were weeds in one half of a bed, as I didn't know which ones I had planted and what they were meant to look like! Also mixed up batches of the two ball rooted leafy green vegetables - one I could eat the roots, the other the leaves, but not (according to instructions) the other way around...

[Bigmallly]

But i must admit, i'm doing it less and less each year LOL.

My problem is I'm running out of years............

[Llamas]

I try to save on labeling by using specific pots for each seed. Round and brown are for Strawberry popcorn seedlings, square and black are for Blue Hopi flint corn. Pink and tall= sweet peas, yellow and fat= chillies (I do have to individually lable all 15 of these though). So long as one of each type is labeled, I find it harder to confuse myself.

HeyWayne, I've also sown my corn, though these types need a longer time to dry out and thus a longer season, but I love trying to put things in too early. It's just so validating when once in a blue moon, it pays off.

[moola]

I am actually a very organised person - I just got too excited! My father has built me some amazing double layered staging and I have vast amounts of space....that needed to be filled!

Paulottie - due to the nature of our garden (not quite the norm) there is only one place our greenhouse could stand and we have to run extension cables to get electricity to it.
We can't use the propogator indoor - we've an odd old house and the light is really very poor. I'd LOVE to have electricity in the greenhouse ...I could be potting up right now when it's dark, a mug of tea on the side. Heaven