February

It's February and the sun is shining outside! I've got soil under my finger nails as I have planted out some fern plug plants (freebies) and covered them with fleece in the vain hope that they will survive the next bout of frost.

It's also a busy month for sowing seeds - so far I've got the red cabbage, peppers, strawberries and foxgloves planted. Unfortunately there isn't quite enough sunshine so the cabbage seedlings have grown too tall and "leggy" - hopefully I can recover them (there are only two as I'm succession sowing this year).

Outside we've got a couple of new additions - cloches. A giant one over one of the main veggie beds and a small one in the side bed (pictured - I'll use it for the red cabbages going out early).

We've also got a fourth veg bed - fashioned out of old book shelves and bits of the defunct garden shed. This year, it'll be hosting the potatoes (more of that later).

Seeds!

The seeds have germinated and they are popping up through the soil which is exciting. When they were put in the sun, they went mental (ok, they didn't turn into full grown plants), so we have decided to move them from one room to another depending on where the sun is.

The top pic is of the lemongrass, basil and mint. The other pic is of the"Spring Marchen" flowers, sweet peppers and chillies (from top to bottom). This is after about two weeks. We used Suttons seeds for all apart from the Marchen, which are Mr Fothergill's.

We used compost especially made for seeds, which seems to be working. The "propagators" are very basic, but again, they do the job. I've not had to water them yet as the compost was very wet. There seems to be a lot of condesation on the inside of the lids, so every now and again I wipe it off to make sure there is plenty of light getting through.

The seeds that came up first were the flowers (Marchen) and the basil. The lemongrass seeds have been doing really well - I may have to thin them out! The mint, chilli and sweet peppers have taken a little bit longer but they are now well on their way.

The next step, once they are stronger is to transfer them to modules, then to the pots in which they will finally be growing. I'm going to use 3" pots for the chillies and sweet peppers and bigger pots for the basil and mint. I may even put the mint into the ground (but within its own pot as apparently it can get out of control). The flowers will go into our border with the shrubs. I'm going to be doing some research for cold frames as I'll need one into order to harden the seedlings (introducing them to the outside world) as I'll be annoyed if they die off!