With the greenhouse heater now in place, we’ve started planting in earnest. We’ve got 24 three-inch pots lined up on the greenhouse bench now, alongside the tomatoes and chillies we planted early in March. If they all take, they should provide us a mix of beans, lettuce and sunflowers, which we can harvest for another batch of seeds.
The beans are a bit of an insurance policy, really. We already have a row of broad beans in the plot but after three weeks in the ground, most of that time sheltered by a cloche, they’re still showing no signs of life. Perhaps they were killed off by the late frosts and hail.
So, to make sure we have something for our risottos and soups this summer, we’ve put in nine climbing beans and nine further broad bean seeds in the greenhouse in the hope that the extra few degrees of warmth will spur them into action.
Beside them, we’ve potted up six sunflower seeds as the ones we drilled into the borders don’t seem keen on doing much at all, and a sprinkling of lettuce seeds in a trough. It’s important that the lettuce are sown at staggered intervals so you have salad right through the summer.
Of them all, it’s the beans that I’m holding out for the most, and in particular the broad beans. Our crop last year was quite poor, yet those few specimens we harvested were among the tastiest of everything we grew.
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You write: “We already have a row of broad beans in the plot but after three weeks in the ground, most of that time sheltered by a cloche, they’re still showing no signs of life. Perhaps they were killed off by the late frosts and hail.”
Hmmmm. Perhaps. But I’d put my money on them (the seeds) rotting in the ground due to overwatering in the early days of their in ground life. ” One watering only on day one was the message I got from Janet DynamicVegemite.
Not toooo much water for big bulky seeds like broad beans. Else they rot. When my B/B seedlings were half an inch tall I spied a couple of sulphur crested cockatoos hauling them out of the ground and chomping on the (still) bulky seed beneath. Never more will I think ” bird brain.” PS: I replanted the seedlings minus the seed and only about ten percent survived. Hardly worth the effort methinks.