URBAN FARMER:If you've never sown seed before, be reassured that it's not difficult as long as you follow some basic rules, writes FIONNUALA FALLON.
IF YOU’VE begun digging and clearing your veg plot but are fretting about losing valuable growing time, don’t worry. Many plants can now be started off from seed indoors or under cover and then planted out later after all risk of frost has passed.
In Ashtown at the OPW’s organic walled fruit and vegetable garden, OPW gardeners Declan Donohoe, Brian Quinn and Meeda Downey are lucky enough to have a nearby heated glasshouse where they’ve been busily growing all sorts of vegetables and herbs since March, but a warm room or window-sill at home will do the job as well.
If you’ve never sown seed before, be reassured that it’s not difficult as long as you follow some basic rules. It’s also hugely rewarding, for if there’s one thing that absolutely captures the magic of gardening, it’s watching as the first fragile seedlings determinedly push their way through the compost. It can be hard to wait patiently, but resist the urge to poke the compost to check progress.
Plants such as lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and courgettes are particularly rewarding to start off indoors from seed.
Sowing Indoors
You’ll need seed trays, seed compost (don’t use garden soil) and plant labels. Some seeds (see table) will need extra heat to germinate, and you can do this with an electric propagator or by keeping the seed tray close to a constant source of heat, such as a radiator or hot press.
The compost should be moist, not wet, and gently firmed into the tray – check that the tray’s drainage holes are punched right through.
Perhaps the biggest mistake new gardeners make is sowing too many seeds too densely – certainly I’ve done it. Space seeds widely apart, or if they’re large enough, sow in individual small pots, then cover with compost.
Another classic mistake is to plant too deeply – planting depth should be as advised on the packet. Water gently and cover with a clear lid/glass/plastic (freezer bags or cling film are both good) before labelling with the variety and date.
Check every day, tapping the lid/covering to loosen any water droplets. Once you see signs of germination, take the cover off and move to a bright, well-ventilated space but away from draughts.
If you’ve planted too densely, now is the time to be utterly ruthless and thin out unwanted seedlings. This can be hard (the guilt!) but grit your teeth and resist the urge to keep every stray – otherwise you’ll end up with lots of weak/diseased plants and no space.
Once seedlings are big enough to handle, they can be “pricked out”. Holding the seedling gently by its leaves, use a small dibber (or something of similar shape such as a pencil/biro) to gently prise the seedling up, making absolutely sure not to damage the roots. Gently, but quickly, lower the seedling’s roots into its new pot (7.5cms to 10cms in diameter), cover the roots with potting compost, then water.
From now on, it’s a case of watering when required (use barely warm water and beware of overwatering) until the plant is large enough to be hardened off and planted outdoors.
Certain indoor plants, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, will go into larger pots again once they’re big enough.
Potato Time
Nothing, and I mean nothing, can beat the taste of your very own home-grown potatoes, hot from the pot, with a nugget of melting butter and a sprinkle of salt.
At Ashtown, the gardeners have just finished planting all 40kgs of their certified seed potatoes, which went into well-prepared, weed-free drills (30cms high, 75cms wide and planted at 30cms intervals with 30cms between each drill) after being chitted for a few weeks in a cool glasshouse.
While chitting sounds very technical, it simply means that the potatoes were spread out in a tray, biggest end up, and then put somewhere cool (not cold), bright (but not in direct sunshine) until the “eyes” started to sprout/shoot. It’s a way of speeding up growth, so that the planted potatoes will then crop much earlier.
At Ashtown, Brian left only two to three young shoots, about 1cm to 2cms long, on each potato as he believes it encourages a stronger, healthier plant.
“God help us if he found Meeda or I planting a potato with more than three shoots on it,” laughs Declan.
The varieties planted at Ashtown include Roosters, Charlotte, Nadine and Sante.
Another variety well worth growing is the blight-resistant, organic Sarpo Mira (available only from Mr Middletons, 01-860 3674). If you’re only buying your certified seed potatoes now, Brian says that it’s still definitely worth chitting them to speed things up.
For those short of space, potatoes can also be easily and successfully grown in large containers (at least 60cms deep and wide). Use a mix of potting compost and very well-rotted manure, make sure that the container has adequate drainage holes and position it somewhere sunny.
Half-fill, firm the compost down, then put in the seed potatoes in with the shoots-end-up (for a container 60cms deep and high, use about three to four seed potatoes). Now cover firmly with about 10cms of compost and keep watered (but not sodden). As the young shoots appear, gradually and gently top up with more compost, always leaving the top couple of centimetres of growth visible.
Once the leaves have properly developed, feed weekly with a liquid foliar feed.
Sowing Asparagus
If you’re short on space or not known for your patience, then maybe skip this section, for asparagus needs both time (two to three years minimum) and a permanent position. But still every gardener wants to grow it, for those young, tender, lime-green spears are both exquisitely delicious and horribly expensive to buy.
At Ashtown, Brian, Meeda and Declan have painstakingly prepared two asparagus beds, for asparagus plants are also fussy, exacting primadonnas that need a sunny spot and rich, perfectly drained soil.
They don’t like acid soil and won’t put up with winter wet, so they’ve been given raised, wide beds (20cms tall) to which lots of horticultural grit and well-rotted manure have been added.
At planting time, as each one-year-old crown of Asparagus Connover’s Colossal was being gently spread out in its planting hole, Brian and Declan also added a handful of fertiliser that smells strangely but deliciously of chocolate. It’s called Osmo and is one of the only range of organic fertilisers available in Ireland that has the BLIK European standard for organic use.
It contains ground cocoa shells, bloodmeal, feather meal and vinasses (beetwine) and is one of a wide range of organic fertilisers distributed by White’s Agri in Ballough, Lusk, Co Dublin (www.whitesagri.ie or 01- 843 8521).
Last week I mentioned that railway sleepers can be sourced from Deck Clad Salvage in Kingswood off the Naas Road (01-459 5492). Concerned readers will be reassured to know that these sleepers are not reclaimed but are new, creosote-free and safe for use in vegetable/fruit gardens.
Another clever, Irish-made alternative for creating raised beds is a modular, aluminium DIY system available from www.veggie-bed.com (086-8861038).
Another reader had reservations about the use of the herbicide RoundUp to initially prepare the site at Ashtown for use as an organic vegetable garden (RoundUp is a glyphosate-based herbicide, which is effective only on actively growing plants).
At Ashtown, the gardeners were faced with the same problem that all new or neglected gardens have, annual and perennial weeds. One corner of the site was heavily infested with Japanese Knotweed, a persistent perennial weed with an extensive root system which is particularly hard to remove using only organic methods, such as digging/cutting back.
Other constraints were the size of the garden and the time and labour available to prepare it. After weighing up all these factors, the decision was then made to use RoundUp to initially clear the site. Since then (four years ago) no herbicides have been used in the garden, which has been maintained entirely organically.
Other gardeners will still prefer to absolutely avoid herbicide use altogether, using organic-only methods to kill persistent perennial weeds such as covering the ground with heavy-gauge black polythene as mentioned in last week’s column.
- Next week's Urban Farmerin Property will cover sowing and planting outside
Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer
