News

June has arrived already and after a very dry May we are already watering everything in our West Yorkshire garden and have watched some amazing growth spurts during the last 6 weeks or so. Our courgettes are all planted out, tomatoes and chillies potted on into final growing positions and beans already arching up their canes. Our new seed varieties Aubergine and Sweet Peppers all look good in the greenhouse, along with our Burpless Cucumber and our new Crystal Ice Cucumber plant (kindly given to us by the green fingered folk at Let’s Grow Preston). Peas are flourishing, we’ve eaten...

Spring is here at last! Over the last few weeks, we’ve had cloche poly tunnels across our raised beds, warming up the soil. We checked the soil last night and it felt warm to the touch, so today we’ve sown direct into the beds; Parsnips (both Gladiator and Tender and True), Swede, Beetroot Mixed and Beetroot Boltardy. 

If, like us at Seeds to Sow, you are on a health kick to start the new year, then you may be interested in growing five of the healthiest vegetables that you can eat, right in your own garden. This will give you easy access to fresh healthy produce right at your door.

Deciding whether to use green manure, as far as we are concerned is an easy question to answer. If your soil is left bare for 6 weeks or more then it is definitely worth spending ½ hour sowing some green manure seeds to that soil then letting nature take its course.  There’s something very satisfying about using nature itself to put back depleted nutrients and organic matter back into your soil, helping to improve soil texture and structure and to suppress weeds. It almost makes you feel like a farmer or guardian of the land, using the unproductive fallow period...

As we head into holiday season the main challenge we have is ensuring that our greenhouse plants are kept well-watered when we go away. The offer of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies and courgettes to family members in exchange for an hour long round trip for watering duties, has fortunately proved too tempting to resist! We will also set up a “Big Dripper” watering system which gives a slow and steady water flow for our tomatoes, which will hopefully prevent them from splitting.  Tomatoes split because of fluctuations in the amount of water they get. Watering after a dry spell can...