Gather ye toilet rolls for sowing seeds (mid Jan)
2January 13, 2013 by Mrs W-M
New seed pots
I’ve been reading through different methods of sowing seeds:
- Some say you need lots of space for the seedling to grow as the roots are immediately restricted when they hit the sides of the pot or seed tray – this maybe true for certain seeds – I’ll research this and let you know!
- Others say use old toilet rolls tied together for support and then you don’t have to disturb the roots at all, when ready just plant ‘em! As I’m all for the easy method, so I’ve started collecting (I have 3 so far). You can also make your own newspaper pots but I’ve read these can fall apart easily when watering.
Other things to consider:
- Give your tools some TLC
Give them all a good clean, scrub off old soil or rust and keep dry, use an old cloth and rub some linseed oil into the handles if you have wooden ones. A good bit of advice I heard was to fill a bucket with sand and vegetable oil and keep in the corner of your shed or garage – when you’ve finished using the tools, wipe off the
After some TLC
mud and dip them in the bucket, this cleans, oils and sharpens them! (a bit).
Before
- Get a ‘jobs this month’ gardening calendar
Also space for adding notes
It’s useful for noting when you sowed seeds or planted things, also to reassure you (and me!) you’re doing the right thing. I found this one Gardener’s Monthly Reminder Calendar by Michael Littlewood which covers all veg and fruit which I love. If you don’t fancy forking out for this (har har!), Jimmy’s allotment has a free pdf planning calendar you can download, he has lots of useful info and advice on his blog jimmysallotment.wordpress.com
- Sowing indoors
Some books suggest you can soon start to sow indoors but I just don’t have the room or a south facing window so will only be sowing in the shed. There is a great piece of advice on weekend gardener that walks you through it if you fancy giving it a go.
- Garden Expert in town
(Even more qualified than my Dad – soz dad!) My friend in work has a lady coming to stay in the next couple of weeks who is a horticultural expert (ooo!) so if you have any questions about your garden, growing veg, fruit, herbs, soil types, pest control or anything at all garden related then post your questions here and I’ll put them to her. I’ll update you with the answers next time. If you can’t wait until then – have a look at Grows On You, I’ve just joined the forum and the people are really chatty and friendly!
Hope the mulching is going well, see you next month! xxx
Back Garden Vegetables 
We use toilet roll tubes to plant seedlings/ seeds. We tend to start things off on windowsills nowadays as the seeds often got taken by the birds. The tubes work well.
Love your calendar, we use notebooks and the best thing we do with the seeds is put them in an index box in sow by Month order. That works well to remind you to plant, as I said we are a bit ‘Good Life’ and tend not to plan things in advance of doing it – we just plant until we run out if room!
We should be more organised but the allotment is the only part of our lives that is free and easy, so we try to just swing it, some years it works, other times it doesn’t.
We use the nettles we cut down to mulch and add as fertilizer – it STINKS but it seems to help the soil a bit.
Other than that we still have to get up there this year, we will wait for after the snow now (not that we have any!) Looking forward to trying your cleaning method.
Oh an indez box, of course! That’s a great idea as I just have a jumbled box of seed packets at the moment. Thanks. I also have plenty of nettles so will try the stinky fertlizer. Hopefully I’ll get my Dad’s shed before the end of the month and I’ll be sowing seeds in there for a while as window are tiny in my place! xx