Seed Sowing - Madness?

After all the rain on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were dry with a few sunny periods. There's some warmth in the sunshine now we're in the middle of March and during the day the greenhouse warms up nicely in any sunny periods. It was enough to tempt me into sowing a few seeds. Our leeks, which take a considerable time to germinate and grow on, certainly needed sowing. I decided to sow a few lettuce seeds too as there's plenty of seeds in a packet so I didn't see there was much to loose. My plan for them, should they germinate, is that they'll grow on in the greenhouse and coldframe before being transplanted into our raised bed at home for an early crop.

Lettuce seeds "All Year Round" & "Tom Thumb"

However, I couldn't help but think that I wouldn’t have considered sowing seeds in January or February but temperature wise January's average temperature was 5.3°C (41.5°F), February's 3.2°C (37.8°F) whilst March stands at 3.7°C (38.7°F) with a forecasted cold spell of near freezing temperatures by day, let along by night, to come over the weekend. There's more snow showers in the forecast too. At least in the greenhouse the seeds will be a bit warmer by day even if the temperature does fall below freezing through the night. They will also be protected from the rain, speaking of which, it's raining here again on Thursday morning.

I think I'm going to have to give some thought to alternative planting strategies at the allotment. It's not going to be possible to dig over any beds until we have a decent spell of dry weather and I don't think our onions and shallots can wait that long. 

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett