Wednesday was pretty dull but mild. The heavy rain forecast early in the week for today never arrived despite all the clouds.
I decided to sow our tomato seeds rather than risk the plot with the rain forecast. Our tomato sowing last year was a bit of a disaster with several sowings having to be made due to poor germination or in some cases simply no germination at all. This year I'm hoping for better. I decided to sow the seeds in some John Innes seed compost. I also want as many seeds under our indoor grow light as possible so after a trip to the garden centre I managed to get our tomato seeds sown and under our indoor grow light. I decided on one seed per cell, to prevent any over crowding when the seeds germinate and I have a few extra cells sown with each variety to allow for any failures.
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| Tomatoes sown |
Posts
Your comment about poor germination last year is interesting. Were you using one of the new "peat free" composts?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I am feeling very "non-green" about this latest development in horticulture. It's all very well beating up gardeners and telling us that we must not use any products containing peat but my experience of the alternatives is that they are rubbish for germinating seeds
Yes it was one of the new "peat free composts". What I find frustrating with the new composts is that they seem completly inconsistant. One bag seems to produce some decent plants then the next bag absolute rubbish plants.
ReplyDeleteI'll see what happens with "John Innes" and if I get better results than last year.
Hmm, at least "it wasn't just me". I'm afraid I am excommunicated from the Green Movement because continue to buy B&Q's Multi-Purpose compost which contains peat - AND gives me superb and consistent germination results.
ReplyDeleteI will continue buying it as long as it is available.
Do you watch Beechgrove Garden (if you have Sky you can get it on BBC Scotland). Last year they did a proper test on all the peat-free composts and had rubbish results on everything except the multi-purpose which DID contain peat. I think Which? have had the same results from a test their Gardening department did.
Yes I enjoy watching Beechgrove Garden and saw their trial last year. good to know the professionals have problems too.
ReplyDeleteNoticed in April edition of Gardeners' World Alan Titchmarsh ponders the use of peat and admits to using peat based composts if necessary. I'm sure most gardeners want to be "green" but peat free compost has to do its job and in my experience it doesn't seem to at the moment.