First sowing of the year
I think that this year I've made a tactical error. Last season's broad beans were great. Sowed directly into the ground at the end of last October, they over-wintered well with only a small degree of attrition due to the elements. But even so, I felt that they were quite slow to develop and this year I wanted to try something different. After all, the whole of the vegetable garden is really just one big experiment and we should be looking for continual improvement year on year.
So this year I decided to sow my broad beans in root trainers and over winter them in the coldframe. This also gave me a chance to over winter my sweet peas as well.
This years sweet peas were also very impressive, adding some wonderful colour, height and scent over the archway entrance to the vegetable garden. They were a little slow in starting, however they were only sown in the Spring.
So the plan was set. Sow in root trainers in late October make sure they were kept suitably watered for the environment, lat them grow away freely for a few weeks in the greenhouse and over winter in the coldframe.
But then things started to go wrong. For a couple of weeks in late October/early November, sowing the beans were there on my list of things to do at the weekend. However, with one thing or another, they never made it to the top of the list. I did finally sow then in November, just a few days before the temperature plummeted sub-zero. Not what I had in mind to develop my strong seedlings. So I put them straight in the coldframe on the assumption that this would be significantly warmer in the icey cold temperatures that if I had left them in the greenhouse, wrapped them in a very thick duvet of fleece and waited. And waited. And waited.
I would normally expect to see some sign of life after a couple of weeks, but nothing. After 3 weeks I was concerned that the seed would be rotting of if it wasn't germinating properly, so took the only course of action that I had left. I brought them all in to the Conservatory. North facing and unheated, the Conservatory has historically been 'the coldframe' before we had a coldframe (if you see what I mean). The poor light quality doesn't help, but it's better than nothing. And as the temperature stays above freezing, I felt that the odds were probably in my favour.
And I was right! 3 days later, I had germination from almost all of the beans and about 40% of the sweet peas (which leads me to question whether it was the extra heat that helped here, or would they have germinated in a few extra days anyway?). Now I have 5 trays of broad beans and mixed sweet peas, all around 5" tall, looking very healthy, if not a little drawn.
And this has led to what I feel is my tactical error. They can't stay in the Conservatory for much longer. I need to harden them off and for the over wintering process to start. But I dare not take them outside for fear that the shock of the increasing cold weather will kill them off.
Watch this space for further developments.....
