Last year’s chilli was a disaster – one stumpy chilli half an inch long. I blame the lack of sun. The seedlings look great. As they do this year…. I germinated them all in the growlight. Then I moved 3 of them upstairs and left 2 in the growlight – you can tell which…
I had to move the all upstairs because the mice in the kitchen were eating them. I love how green and bright their leaves are and I guess the mice do too!
I hae more than I have pots to put them in. I love them and I love how ordered and official they look. (They’re actually even bigger than this now – this was 1-2 weeks ago).
Last year, I planted these and I struggled a bit. They all germinated but came up really thickly. I didn’t pot them on properly and most of them died, then I did exactly the same thing again – and only ended up with a few good ones. None in my garden, though the ones at the Red Cross were lovely.
This year, I have been strict about pricking on and potting out. They are such tiny seeds, you still can’t get them thinly sown, but I ruthlessly moved them. I did it when they were quite dry so it was easy to separate them without everything getting sticky.
I did this on the 20th Feb – a week ago! I put half in pots in the greenhouse, and left some of them under the growlite, which are doing very well. The ones in the greenhouse are still alive!
Hopefully they will look like this…
Last week (mid Jan) we finished off the basil. I bought one pot in Spring, divided it and with a bit of help of the growlight, kept it going til now. It got a bit spindly and skanky by the end. I know we don’t eat huge amounts of basil but I am proud to have kept us self-sufficient for so long!
I got my growlight out of the cellar! I put the basil in it. I’m so proud of this basil. I bought it in a pot from the supermarket in May (?). I split it and have kept it alive ever since. Ihave managed to make us self-sufficient in basil for more than 6 months! Admittedly that is because we don’t use basil much, but it is the ONLY thing I have managed to make us self sufficient in (apart from tough outdoor herbs like sage which don’t count and we also don’t eat much).
I’m going to eat the ones at the front but try and 1 or 2 plants alive for as long as possible. Apparently they are going yellow because of too much water, too little, not enough nutrients or too cold. I’m going too cold… It says they like a night time temperature of no less than 10degrees. I’m guessing it’s not even that during the day in the kitchen
Chris bought me this for Christmas. I really like it. It’s got a whole glowing thing to the kitchen. I am going to mostly use it as a propagator to get seedlings going. I have grown some salad in it, but it seems a lot of work for one portion of greens. So I think I will use it in later Winter/Spring for seedlings and in autumn for seedlings or keeping herbs alive as the light goes.
I have got some chilli going it in it. Also some tomato seedlings – which haven’t come up yet. I had the coriander in it but it’s going slightly yellow, so I’m going to put it into the greenhouse again.
I need to get better at planning what’s in it. In theory, the light should be up at the top until something has germinated and once it has, it should be about 6cm above it (otherwise it gets leggy as it tries to reach the light). But this takes a bit of organising if you’ve got salad that’s 4 cm tall, seedlings that have come though and some that haven’t.
So far I pretty much all the seeds I have planted in here have come up. I wasn’t expecting such a good strike rate.
chilli, tomatoes, scabious, bladderwort, catchfly, Queen Anne’s lace,
My Garden 