Congestion in the greenhouse

Our third day involved less energetic gardening activities. Having washed down the greenhouse glass and staging recently, the time was right to allocate space for short-term and summer-long residents.

Several of our vegetables, peas, beans, onions, shallots, courgettes, sweet corn, are started in pots or cell trays and from April to mid-May they need the protection an unheated greenhouse offers.

Similarly, there are half-hardy ornamentals, some raised from seed, others bought in as plug plants, that require shelter and a steady growth pattern until safe planting out time which is generally late May.

Summer greenhouse residents (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers) also need consideration, so it’s a situation that requires careful management.

A batch of 40 young “Kelsae” onion plants arrived via mail order, and they were introduced to John Innes compost in first pots. One month ago, ten fuchsia cultivars were purchased as young plug plants and potted up immediately. They’d made good growth in the garden room, so were given a transfer to bigger pots, but before doing two stem cuttings were taken from each. Result? There are now two generations of fuchsia adding to the collection!

The time is right for us to soak the hard coated seeds of runner beans and corn on the cob in a bowl overnight and sow all of them individually into 9cm pots.

We use an egg cup and follow the same process with curled leaf parsley, then add a pinch of seed to each section in a cell tray. This helps speed up the germination time.

Other incoming plants will add to greenhouse congestion but it’s not all one-way traffic. There are two dozen each of garden peas and broad beans standing in pots, and we’ve judged them tough enough and ready to plant out now!