January in the garden
Emma Hams
The garden starts up slowly in January. At the beginning of the month it is still dark, but I’m definitely starting to notice the difference as we approach February. The days are getting longer and we have already started with sowing.
For me, the first sowing is the most amazing one. These are the sweet peas, just one tray of 100 plants will be enough to plant one bed for the “pick your own” at the beginning of summer.
The next sowing is everything we need for the salad bags. These include brassicas, lettuces, bulls blood, endives, radicchio and, not for the salad bags but definitely a tasty one, the spring onions. These sowings are filling up the tunnel quickly.
We use a moon calendar to sow on the right day, this means we have four different kinds of day that divide the crops up: root days, flower days, fruit days and leaf days. Every twenty seven and a half days, the moon makes its journey through the zodiac. This means that every two to three days the moon travels through each star sign. Every sign in the zodiac has a different affinity with a different part of a plant, and when the moon passes through that sign on its journey, these qualities are enhanced. So, on a leaf day we will sow salads, giving the seeds the right circumstances and best start in life to produce an abundance of healthy leaves.
This can make the planning of the sowing a little more difficult, so we make a plan before we start the growing season so we know exactly when we have to do what.
Sowing is definitely one of my favourite jobs. It’s a wonderful feeling when you visit the trays every day and you see the little sprouts coming up.
The propagator tunnel has been empty for most of winter.
Trays upon trays are starting to fill up the tables.
The first seedlings from last year. In a few weeks, the trays will start looking like this.
