God I love growing our own

[jenkinsbrynmair]

One of the places I bought from claims that soaking the seeds in weak room-temperature tea will help with germination.

China or India?

I'm sure it's recommended that sweet pea seeds be soaked in water before sowing.

That's because the shell of the seed is so hard, it's just to give them a head start with the natural process. Serioud sweet pea buffs say you should chip each seed with a knife

 

[RJC]

I'm just getting around to sowing pepper seeds for this year. One of the places I bought from claims that soaking the seeds in weak room-temperature tea will help with germination. I'd never heard that before, but searching online suggests it's a commonly repeated suggestion. Except for the only scientific paper I can find on the matter, in which the researchers came to the conclusion that it made no difference whatsoever

I'm sure it's recommended that sweet pea seeds be soaked in water before sowing. I'm wondering now if that might just be a commonly-repeated myth, too.

James

I never soak sweet pea seeds before sowing...and I've just germinated my chilli seeds (without the aid of tea) in a pot on top of a radiator.

 

[JamezF]

China or India?

Chamomile or English Breakfast seem to be the options mentioned when anyone has expressed a preference.

James

 

[JamezF]

Serioud sweet pea buffs say you should chip each seed with a knife

I reckon they might need to get out more.

James

 

[enrico]

Pepper, sweet peppers, chilli, wasabi rocket, pease, broad beans, all showing under the grow light. Potatoes chitting well, tomatoes not up yet. Just ordered different cucumber seeds from Yorkshire Seed. Half the precise of DT Brown with twice as much seed. No fancy packaging but hey! Who needs that.

 

[JamezF]

The one time-consuming thing I haven't done so far this Winter is spread compost on the veggie beds. Sadly work has eaten too much of my time. As a way of life, I'm not sure I can really recommend it

James

 

[judy12]

I've read this re sweet peas and broad beans - suppose any seed wd benefit from softening the skin before sowing,. Thought I'd try soaking half my sweetpeas and half not to see whether there is a difference.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

another 'trick' I was told as a youngster was when sowing parsley (notorious for not germinating around here) was to pour boiling water onto the drill after putting the seeds in.

 

[Penninetrader]

I've read this re sweet peas and broad beans - suppose any seed wd benefit from softening the skin before sowing,. Thought I'd try soaking half my sweetpeas and half not to see whether there is a difference.

Real.life test, what can't speak

 

[JamezF]

Sowed lots of pepper/chile seeds this week: red and yellow Corno di Toro, chocolate and purple bell peppers, jalapenos, cayennes, biquinhos and Malawi piquante. They're currently in the airing cupboard whilst I effect some repairs to the greenhouse propagator.

They're not the first things to be planted for this year -- garlic went into the ground a few months back and some have already reached about 6" in height -- but it feels good to be sowing seeds once again.

James

 

[JamezF]

I forgot that I also sowed Hungarian Black chiles which are quite similar to japapenos, but, err, black I suspect that the black colour occurs before they are fully ripe as they go a really beautiful deep glassy red if conditions are warm enough for long enough.

James

 

[enrico]

Out crocii are suffering. They are all up but falling over in the weather without opening. I hope the snowdrops get chance to open. Damn weather

 

[The Poot]

Out crocii are suffering. They are all up but falling over in the weather without opening. I hope the snowdrops get chance to open. Damn weather

Same here with the crocus. There’s snowdrops a plenty this year but the bees can’t get out to them. The forecast for next week is looking a little better.

 

[Murox]

Same here with the crocus. There’s snowdrops a plenty this year but the bees can’t get out to them. The forecast for next week is looking a little better.

Well mine peeped out and were promptly blasted to bits in the storms, on the plus side there are green shoots reappearing.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

the crocuses took a hammering after the apple tree came down and I've been treading around sorting out the debris, they are usually fairly late flowering with us, so hopefully a few will manage to show their faces.

 

[JamezF]

I hope the snowdrops get chance to open.

Yet again the oddness of living only a few tens of miles apart yet having plants behave completely differently... Our snowdrops have been out in significant numbers for several weeks now.

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

same here - snowdrops been out for weeks - usually I see them on New year's day over the mountain in Bethlehem.

 

[enrico]

Yet again the oddness of living only a few tens of miles apart yet having plants behave completely differently... Our snowdrops have been out in significant numbers for several weeks now.

James

Ours are out of the ground but they just haven't opened. Hopefully tomorrow

 

[JamezF]

Crazy seed-sowing day today. I've been a bit lax thus far, so I needed to catch up and now have multiple types of pea, aubergines, various lettuces, beetroot, coriander, dill, huge numbers of bulb onions and some salad onions sown in modules. I think that's almost caught me up with the vegetables. Tomorrow I'll try to get some of the flower seeds sorted.

Amazingly some of my chiles and peppers have sprouted after less than a week. Those that have are now out into the greenhouse where they can get more light.

James

 

[JamezF]

As of this evening, I have thirty-five seed trays full of seeds waiting to germinate (plus the eight trays of peppers sown earlier). Not everything I wanted to get done, but what's left ideally needs both heat and light to germinate and for that I need to get the greenhouse propagator working again, which might take a couple of weeks. And in fact I've run out of compost anyhow.

James