Sorry for the break in service: I have been busy, and ill, in that order. Now that I am back to (nearly) full strength, I have been turning my attention back to important things, like this blog, and my book.
Being terribly impatient, I've already sown some lettuce seeds a good month or two of the scheduled time: they're two varieties called All Year Round and Marvel of the Four Seasons, so I am hoping they live up to their names. They're in my brand new compact plant trainer, and looking rather leggy, which is not surprising given how few hours of sunlight (or even light) they are getting. I am hoping that, with cold frame protection, they'll give me an early crop of spring lettuce.
Because of an ongoing problem with onion white rot on my plot, I am trying growing some onions from seed this year. Apparently onion grown from seed is less susceptible to this horrible fungal condition that can (and has, in previous years) wipe out almost your entire onion harvest. Traditionally onion seeds are sown on Boxing Day (Dec 26 for all the American readers). I've always been convinced this is just a way out of spending any more time in fraught family situations ("sorry love, must go and sow my onion seeds now, couldn't possibly play Twister with Aunty Mary and the kids again"). I was a day or so late with my onions which went in on Dec 27. They took a little longer than the four or five days it took the lettuce seeds to come up, but now they're going strongly. Now I just need to get around to contructing the two double-decker cold frames I bought so they're ready for the hardening off season.
If you don't know what hardening off is, think of it like this. You're a seedling, brought up in a cosy propagator on someone's sunny windowsill. You're used to humid, warm environment, without a breath of breeze in the air. Suddenly you're whisked away to a cold, windy allotment. You're not acclimatised to the cold nighttime temperatures. You keel over and die.
The solution is that seedlings are gradually exposed to the outside, perhaps by being placed in a cold frame for a few hours on a warm day then brought back inside. Gradually the plants toughen up and can be moved to the allotment and will adapt to conditions there.
Hardening off can be a real pain for allotmenteers: it requires a lot of time spent shuttling plants inside and outside. But it does improve greatly the survival rate when you transplant crops to their final growing position. A cold frame or cloche will help a great deal to protect from the worst of the elements but there's no substitute for the gradual switch from inside to outside.
Now I have cold frame envy :o(
I have a fully working cold frame and two wooden frames which need making into cold frames and I STILL want one of those!
Posted by: Muppet | January 13, 2006 at 10:01 AM