Sow and Sow

The sun is shining this morning, but the forecast says there will be more rain later. And more rain and wind tomorrow. The weather so far this year has not been conducive to gardening, and that “must sow seeds” feeling hasn’t kicked in yet. I did manage to nip outside for five minutes last month to sow broad beans in modules, but that’s as far as I got.

But however meh it might be outside at the moment, some seeds do need to be sown if there is going to be a garden this year. There’s no particular urgency yet, but I thought I should at least make a list of what I want to sow this spring.

Meanwhile, indoors, the hydroponic seedling tray needed a clear out. Not all sowings are 100% successful. (Some species, I guess, don’t like to grow this way. For others, my seeds are probably too old.) And because the tray wasn’t entirely full, bright light falling directly on the water made a breeding ground for algae. It’s not particularly nice stuff to handle, it’s slimy and stains everything a very deep shade of green. It’s not ideal to have it in the seedling tray, although it’s not fatal to the plants.

The big trays in the Hydroponicum came with blanks to cover empty spaces, but the seedling tray didn’t. So Ryan has designed and 3D-printed me some.

The seedling tray grows plants faster than I can transfer them to the Hydroponicum. I had long decided that when spring came, I would try using it to raise seedlings that would ultimately end up in the garden. So now that the tray is clean, and we have a solution to the algae problem, I have started sowing seeds for the garden.

In this aerial view of the seedling tray, you can see the blanks covering empty holes at either side. The first row contains a couple of plants – one New Zealand