Don't Miss Out: Sow These Seeds Now!

The next few weeks are the busiest in the gardener's calendar, with absolutely loads to sow and plant. It's not so much what can I sow this month, but what can't I? Today we'll be getting some squash family veggies underway, sowing my favorite root crop, and starting off possibly the healthiest vegetable of all, and I'll be planting these mysterious looking things. More on that later. I love squash family plants. Cucumbers, pumpkins, zucchini or courgettes, and everything in between. This plucky band of fruiting vegetables is amongst the most prolific crops of all, while the plants themselves go from seedling to great, sprawling plants in what seems like the blink of an eye. I'm growing three types of squash this year. Cucumbers, winter squash, and zucchini or courgettes. I've already started my cucumbers because they'll be going in the warmth of the greenhouse so they can be planted a bit earlier, and I sowed some more of them just last week actually, and I tell you what, these guys, I kid you not, came up in two and a half days. That is the fastest I've ever known them to germinate, and I think it must be a new world record, but let me know, have you ever had things germinate this quickly? Let me know in the comments. So let me show you what I'm going to be sowing today though, and I've got one winter squash here. It's a beautiful green and orange striped one with this really rich flesh, and I've chosen a variety that stores really well too. And I've got two types of zucchini or courgettes. The first is this beautiful ribbed one, and when you cut the fruits up you get a beautiful cogwheel kind of profile that looks just stunning on the plate. And then you've got to have a yellow-fruited one of course. This one here is Aurelia, and it just looks stunning. But there are lots of yellow-fruited zucchini or courgettes to try, and have a look at this little list here. The seeds of squash family plants are pretty chunky, so I'm going to start them off in these kind of small pots like this. You could also use chunky size plug trays, kind of like this size would be ideal. Now if they do get too big in the time that they're growing and I need to pot them on, then that's absolutely fine, I can always do that. But starting them off in smaller pots like this just saves a bit of space initially, especially if you're starting them off indoors on a windowsill. That's my pots all filled with potting mix. I didn't bother sifting or screening it, it's just gone in as it is. And now let's write our labels before we sow so we don't get mixed up. What I'm going to do for each seed is just carefully nick it with these nail clippers here, just so the very outside of the seed coat is nicked, which will let water into the seed that much quicker and speed germination. Now if you'd like to know more about that, then do check out the video which I will link to in the description. I'm just going to lay the seeds on the pots now, and then we'll plant them in a sec. Now when it does come to planting them, I never know whether it's best to sow them like this so the moisture drains off either side and it doesn't rot, or whether it makes any difference whatsoever. I've seen some reports somewhere that it doesn't make much of a difference, but I'd love to know your experiences, so do let me know. Anyway, I'm gonna just play it on the safe side, make little holes and sow them on their sides like that just in case. I'm gonna just bring these indoors to germinate on a warm windowsill, and then once they're up I'm going to move them into my greenhouse. A cold frame would work as well, just somewhere where night temperatures are above roughly late 40s or 8 celsius or so. All types of squash love a sunny spot, and once they get their roots into the soil they will put on rapid growth. My plants will go out towards the of this month or early next, depending on the forecast. If it's cool, leaden-skied, or there's a cold wind around, then I can always put a little cover over the plants for the first week or two to help them settle in. And if sowing into pots all seems like a bit of a faff, well you will be delighted to know that all types of squash can be sown directly where they are to grow later on in spring once all risk of frost has passed. Just sow into loose, rich soil, and I like to sow two seeds and then remove the weaker seedling, and then pop a jar over the top to keep it nice and warm until the seedlings come up. Come and have a gander at my cauliflowers here. These guys were sown last autumn and planted just a couple of weeks ago, and I am delighted to see fresh growth on them. Clearly things are already beginning to warm up nicely. Cauliflower is super versatile in the kitchen, but there's another brassica that steals the crown in our household. Summer broccoli, or calabrese. It's super easy to grow, and I find that when you harvest the main spear you get a secondary cut of smaller spears just a few weeks later. And you can even eat the stem. It's lovely in stews and soups and has an almost sweet taste. I reckon it has a superior flavor to even the spears themselves. I'm just gonna start my seedlings off in sieved or sifted compost because these seeds are a little bit smaller, and then I can just space the seeds nice and thinly across the top of the potting mix like this before covering them over. Then once the seedlings are up, I will carefully transfer the seedlings, putting one into each plug to grow them on. Now you could of course sow directly into the plug tray like that to save that step, but I like to sow in a pot like this so that I can choose the biggest and best seedlings and guarantee exactly one seedling per plug. Just saves a bit of space initially too. Broccoli will need regular watering especially as it gets warmer. That's because it's a cool season crop that really doesn't like it too hot and dry. Then when I plant it out I will need to, surprise surprise, put up netting to keep the pigeons off. Then as the season progresses, probably swap that out with insect mesh to keep off the butterflies, aphids and moths. What a list of brassica botherers! But by midsummer I should be cutting off those first green nutritious spears. Wonderful! Beetroots are divine, but grow them yourself and they are positively saintly. I love them roasted off with some thyme, a little honey, olive oil and perhaps some balsamic vinegar to cut through. Serve them cold or hot with perhaps a salad and a good cheese. Now's a good time to sow them with perhaps another sowing in midsummer to give us roots to enjoy over winter. Now I'm going to sow them, oh gosh look at this, I just need to remove this volunteer potato here from last year. Look at that, that's raring to go. I might try and replant that elsewhere. Anyway I'm going to make a row here next to my shallots and it's going to be about, well, a centimeter or half an inch deep like that. It's perhaps a little bit close to these shallots here but I'm going to harvest them quite young as kind of baby beets, so I think this will be fine. Now the seeds themselves, I'm going to sow them maybe one every inch or couple of inches, so kind of three to five centimeters. They'll probably still need to be thinned out to leave maybe three inches or seven centimeters between each plant, but I'll do that once the seedlings are up. This just covers bases in case any of them fail. If I was going to sow another row I'd space that a foot or 30 centimeters apart. Now because it's still a little bit cooler at night and plants are at risk of flowering prematurely or bolting in that case, I have chosen a bolt resistant variety here called bolt hardy. And now let me show you how to sow them into plugs, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put three seeds per plug like that, and the idea of multi-sowing like this is that they will be grown on and planted out as clusters. This just saves a bit of time because I'm planting out clusters of seedlings rather than just one at a time. Now each little seed is in fact a seed cluster, so although I'm sowing three seeds I might get many more seedlings, so if I get any more than five per plug I will just thin them out to leave, well, no more than five. And then when I come to plant them out they'll be planted out a little bit further apart, roughly one foot or 30 centimeters apart in both directions. I'm going to get these labeled and watered up and then moved into my greenhouse, and with that little bit of extra warmth these should get a bit of a head start on these guys we've just sown into the soil, so I should get a slightly earlier harvest. Tell you what, on a slightly chilly day it is so nice in here, I might just put that sort of garden lounger in and just have a little drink in here later. I grew all these, I'm just so chuffed, we've got chili peppers, marigolds, look at these tomatoes, they're just like... These are the last of my winter beets here and they're a good size, so I'm going to harvest and enjoy these over the next few days I reckon, make more room for the spring sown crops, talking of which, our next one, salad onions, spring onions, scallions, whatever you call them, they will add a real zing to the springtime garden. So I'm just going to sow my salad onions in between two rows of carrots that I sowed last week, and I'll pop a video onto that down below. Now the great thing about growing onions of any type next to carrots is that they're really great companions, they help to confuse each other's pests, that's carrot fly and onion fly. The leaves are different and they'll confuse them, so it's a really good companion, and this is really what it's all about, using the strengths of one crop to benefit the other. I'm going for something a little different this time, I'm going to sow a red stemmed salad onion, this should really get the lunch guests gossiping. Now I'm going to sow them quite thinly, aiming for a seed every kind of half inch or centimeter or so. The great thing about salad onions and carrots is that the roots are at different depths, so they shouldn't really compete with each other, and they're quite thin and strappy anyway, so they'll behave themselves, but as a result I will need to make sure that I remove any weeds promptly. On the subject of weeds, it really is very important because they can get easily swamped, so do check back often, and I will need to water by hand here because of the close spacing to hoik out the weeds so they don't disturb the shallow rooted salad onions. Now if I was to grow more than one row, I would set them about eight inches or 20 centimeters apart, which is quite close, but their thin strappy leaves do allow that. Right then, time to reveal the identity of those scratchy looking roots I showed you right at the start of the video. Would you believe these rather unpromising spidery looking roots belong to the very finest vegetable you could possibly grow? Asparagus! I've got just one asparagus plant here, and it's beginning to come through actually. However, I'd like more of it because asparagus isn't exactly cheap to buy. The good news is that as a perennial vegetable it will come up year after year. That's really good news for us because we only have to plant once for up to 20 years of delicious tender spears. Once established, there's not much to do to asparagus other than keep it well weeded, mulch at the start of the season to feed the soil, and cut back the old feathery fronds at the end of summer. Now I'm going to have to resist the urge to harvest my new asparagus for at least a couple of years, but boy oh boy will it be worth the wait. Now asparagus needs a sunny spot and nicely well-drained soil. This is pretty good stuff actually, so it's going from a good position here. Now I'm going to dug a trench and I'm going to dig another trench about 18 inches or 45 centimeters apart, so I'll get two rows in here. I've got my existing asparagus there, I'm going to get two more here. Now along the bottom of our trench I'm going to add some well-rotted compost here and then lightly fork that in. This will get things off to a really good start, just give it that nice rich soil and help improve the drainage as well. Now with the bottom of the trench nicely enriched, I'm now going to create a little mound along the on which I'm going to lay on our crowns. Let me just show you this crown here. These are year-old crowns, in fact it might be two years. These are such a good size and that gives us a good head start on rather than just sowing them, and these are widely available from mail order companies. Do seek out a good one though because you'll get such better results with roots like these rather than some of the straggly offerings you'll often find in garden centers and nurseries off the shelf. Now the idea of the ridge is that we can just splay the roots apart either side of it and it just keeps the crown facing up and helps everything drain off nicely. Just nestle it in and we're aiming for a spacing of 18 inches or 45 centimeters apart within the row as well. I'm only planting two in this row because I've already got one that's already part established. That's about right and now we just need to simply fill back the soil so that the crown is about four inches or 10 centimeters below the surface. The roots and especially the shoots are incredibly brittle, so gentle hands are very much the order of the day here. Now I'm going to have to be patient, so I'm not going to harvest any spears this year or next. The third year I will harvest just a few, exercising real restraint, and then by the fourth year I will be harvesting with gusto. And I'll take the last cut by early summer so that they can recover ready for the following year. Sometimes gardening just requires a little bit of patience like this, but it only serves to make the rewards all the sweeter. There's still time to last month's crops, so why not head over here next? In the meantime, happy gardening and I'll catch you next time.