Terry Walton feels the love with his seed sowing
Valentine’s Day always reminds me to get my ‘love apples’ under way!
The day for sweethearts has arrived! Valentine’s Day is when we show our true affection with a card and a gift to the one we love and many bouquets of flowers and red roses will be purchased, along with large boxes of chocolates, bestowed on lovers everywhere.
For me, the true gift of love is a plant that’s still growing, to blossom and grow for many years. It’ll be a constant reminder of one’s undying love long after the bouquets have perished and the chocolates have been consumed. If you’re really romantic, I saw one supermarket selling heart-shaped cucumbers!
With love in the air I turn my attention to the ‘love apple’, more commonly known as the tomato. This is my reminder to sow these summer fruits and get them underway as they seem to take an eternity to come to fruition. This year I’m sowing one of my favourites, ‘Gardener’s Delight’, for early cherry types. For my mainstay I always grow ‘Shirley’, which have a great taste and grow well in most circumstances. I also grow ‘Montello’, with plum-shaped and very heavy-cropping fruits, which produce an abundant harvest all summer long. I’m trying ‘Ruby Falls’ for the first time, too. It’s another cherry type that can be planted closer together. The trusses grow away from the plant, which will aid ripening and also picking. Then finally a variety called ‘Heinz 1350’, which is perfect for cooking and produces large beefsteak fruit.
All seed are sown in a 10cm (4in) pot of good multi-purpose compost and sprinkled over the surface before covering with ½cm (¼in) of sieved compost. Pots are watered with a spray of warm water, then placed inside a plastic bag to keep them moist. The whole thing is then put in my airing cupboard for 48 hours to spark seed into germination. The pot and bag are then placed on a warm windowsill until the seedlings pop through.
With most of the work on the plot under control I can spend some time in the greenhouse indulging in sowing seed. It’s time for one of the crops you wait an eternity for, the capsicum, or pepper. I’m growing ‘Corno di Toro Rosso’, which is a prolific cropper with fleshy, tapering red peppers that can also be harvested when green. They follow the same procedure as the tomato, then placed in a plastic bag with two days in my airing cupboard. Then onto the windowsill until the seedlings emerge. Both the tomatoes and peppers need a constant temperature range of 18-21C (65-70F) to germinate.