So it begins

Planting season is finally here and the clock is ticking. February is the month when seedling production begins for early-crop plants such as tomatoes and cucumbers, and slow growers such as celeriac, which is the preferred variety of celery round here.

Early tomatoes need to be sown for seedlings in February, so they can grow and harden by mid-April when they need to be put into their permanent place — weather permitting.

So we sowed some. A dozen seeds from each of the five varieties we bought, to be precise. If all sprout and if all then grow well… We’ll strategise about crossing that bridge when we get to it. Because we really, really hate killing plants, especially tiny little plants that just don’t grow as big as their neighbours.

Pictured above, left to right, we’ve got Marmande, Red Cherry, and a local determinant variety called Miliana. Never tried any of these, except the cherries, but we’ve read good reviews.

We also sowed some marigolds because they had expired last November and instead of throwing the seeds away, we thought we’d give them one last chance. They’re good for the bees and other pollinators, and they’re easy on the eye, so it was an easy decision to make.

Straight into the ground we put some mint seeds and now we’re keeping our fingers crossed at least some of them will germinate, for a more comprehensive mint family representation in the garden. The spearmint cluster is doing excellently, putting out new shoots over more territory. This winter we’ll have more spearmint for the sniffles tea, even if the mint refuses to grow.

All the tiny green things are spearmint shoots from the parent plants at the top of the frame. We now need to do some emergency marking to avoid stepping on them while they’re small and easy to miss.

The chamomile we experimented with a few weeks ago didn’t do so well. Out of a hundred teeny tiny seeds only a couple sprouted and to date only one survives. We’ll just have to get our chamomile from the meadow by the church. Some things are not meant to be.

One thing that, weird as it sounds, may be meant to be, are the cherry branches Cris put in water a few months ago. Only it turned out they’re not cherries but plums. The chronicler of Slavs in the Garden misunderstood. Anyway, it appears trees can in fact be grown from a branch. It simply takes time and it’s got to be a young branch, per the internet. But if that branch is still alive after two cold months and leafing — it probably has a good chance.

Seedlings are fun but some less demanding plants can be put directly into the ground. For us, the first such thing is radishes. A hundred and eighty seeds, to be precise, and we can confidently be precise because we used a hack for sowing radishes that involves the use of a plastic egg crate.

You press the crate into soft soil and you get ten perfect “holes” for ten seeds. You pop a seed into each dip, cover it with surrounding soil and you’re done. The time this saves is unbelievable. And now the radish exterminators in the family will have an early harvest.

Ten days from now we’ll be sowing 180 more radishes, the broccoli, the celeriac, and possibly some salad. After all, we invested in special seedling soil mixture, we’d better make the best of it. Because come March, it’s pepper time, and onion time, and maybe bean time, weather permitting.

We do hope the weather is in a permissive mood this spring. For now we only know for sure that spring is well on its way. The weather forecast may lie but snowdrops never do.