How to grow things?

[OverWyreGrower]

This seems like a really silly question, but here goes...

So, you've ordered all your seeds, and its Spring, ready to plant!

Do you:
a) Sow seed in greenhouse/under cover etc and plant out the tiny plants when they have grown
b) Make holes/furrows in veg bed and chuck seed in
c) A N Other way?

Do I need to buy tiny little propagator things etc, and do the "pricking out" thing (which always seems like more work than necessary)? Or can I basically chuck the seeds in the ground and wait for them to grow?

(You can tell I've never grown more than herbs before....)

Cheers

OWG

[Alison]

Sorry not to be very helpful but it depends what you're growing as some things are more suited to one method than others. In addition, there are some plants (beans, courgettes to name a few) which you can plant straight into the ground but if you want an earlier crop are worth starting off in the greenhouse or cold frame to give them a bit of early frost protection. You're pretty northern so will have a shorter growing season than somebody in, say Cornwall - mind you with global warming you never know what you'll be able to grow. If you let people know what you're planning they can give you some crop by crop advice. Alternatively you could decide to start with some less labour intensive plants for the first year and get the hang of those before moving onto some of the more needy ones in future years.

[Alison]

Also meant to say that if you don't want to be bothered with too many different types of seeds to prick out etc you may be able to stick to one or two types and swap with friends etc - got a couple of butternut squashs in exchange for some of my spare tomato plants this year.

[annie trip]

Hi owg how goes it.

You lucky thing to have a greenhouse i am limited to windowsills!!

I found this year and am NO expert some things were good straight into ground,eg beetroot, carrots, parsnips. Most other things i did went into seed trays lettuce,brocolie, chard,caulis, cabbage, celery etc. Little seeds easily get eaten in my garden and this gives them a head start.

Another thing is you can plant out the stronger plants and nurse the rest a bit longer, someone on the vine had taken lots of excess seeds potted up to a car boot and sold them off, did well from what i can remember.

One last thing by sowing in trays you can make a few sowings a couple of weeks apart and lengthen your growing season.

Hope everything staid down in those winds last night!!

Annie T.

[yoanbob]

i'mno expert either oyg but we plant ours in those bio degradable paper pots in green house then move out side it saves pricking out.

[Squirrel]

I've chucked all my plastic pots and started making paper ones which seem to hang onto the moisture for the plants in my very sandy soil! Works a treat, and I have nowhere for the snails to hide over winter!

[OverWyreGrower]

Right, I'll need some growing trays and paper pots for spring then!

Annie Trip: the rest of the apples fell off last night in the wind! Only realised what had happened when the puppy brought one inside to play with! That's my job for tonight - pick up and salvage windfall apples!

Keep ideas for planting etc coming!!

[annie trip]

OWG.

My 2 labradors love to eat all the windfall apples and pears they are not too keen on the quince(neither am i) i would however rather pick them up as all that fruit plays havoc with there digestion!!!

[OverWyreGrower]

Bizarrely our Boxer pup, Max loves to eat plums and apples, and usually he finds the grottiest, rottenest one to eat!

Since he has a "Boxer tummy" anyway, the fruit doesn't affect him that much...

[Bibliobeck]

Hi Overwyre

I tend to bring things on in a small propogator - got it from Lidl (I think), definitely under �20 anyway and I wouldn't be without it. In a few short days I'm putting a lovely new set of seedings into the greenhous. I even ran out of room this year and had to buy a small plastic greenhouse which has also been a real boon (took the shelves out & grew toms in a growbag in it when everything was planted out )

Thought you might also like to know our spaniel, AKA The Beast ( ) loves those windfalls. In fact if there aren't any, she jumps under the tree on her back 2 legs trying to reach any low hangers! Even more bizarrely though, the naughty rabbits from the surrounding fields eat the windfalls if the dog hasn't got to them first! Well they eat everything else in the garden I suppose, so why stop at fruit

[JazzDuke]

Life is too short for pricking out. Summer is too short for reliable sowing in the ground. Start things off in roottrainers/propagators on windowsill/greenhouse. Work out space and time required before you start (I know this from experience, hands up anyone who has a big enough sunny windowsill)

[dexterdoglancashire]

hi OWG! I read/heard somewhere - probably here! that the best thing to do with root veg ie. onions, carrots, parsnip and the like, plant then directly into prepared ground as they don't like their bits/roots being disturbed.
Having said that, on the advice of Nick, this weekend am going to plant my japanese onions into paper pots ready for transplanting later. I could dig out (sorry for the pun!) the place where I got my paper potter from if you'd like the details. One of the best things I've ever bought! dexterdog

[martini]

I think we could possibly do with an article in GYO about propagation (i.e. what to put in a propagator and what to sow straight out. It would certainly help a newbie like me

[dexterdoglancashire]

Look forward to the article asap. Thanks! dexterdog

[nick the grief]

Hi OWG - Spring allready, did I miss xmas

In answer to your first question.

1. I sow a lot of mine in the greenhouse & then prick them out into Call trays or pots depending. If you sow strraigh out in ht eground you are at the mrcy of the weather a bit whreas you have a degree of control under cover.
2. Some things like onionsets you plant out obviously
3. What other ways are there?

As to what Snadger says about root veg, you can sow these & plant them out but with things like carrots & Parsnips you need to grow them in something long otherwise you could damage the growing point of the root & then it will fork. One way of doing it is to sow on damp paper & then "sow" the ones that have chitted, you can do these individually so won't need to thin them out (may help with carrot fly) or you can do as a friend of mine does. He forms long tubes of news paper (about 6" long around a peice of pipe, sow the chitted seed in this then plants that out when the pant is bigger.

Onions are fine to sow in trays (all the exhibition ones are grown this way) as they aren't root veg. The Bulb is a swollen part of the stem really with the roots below but they are traditionally grown in the same rotation as carrots etc (probably to help confuse the respective pests.

You dont need to go aout & buy a heated propagator. I made mine & the most expensive bit would have been the cable & thermostat but there again you probably don't need one 8ft x 2 ft. For several years I managed with a steel tray filled with sand & a parafin lamp underneath to provide the heat source. I still think the plants were better than they are now - Maybe because of the extra CO2 from the heater, I don't know or it maybe because I couldn't grow so many I had more time to look after them better SO long as you keep the sand damp it works fine.

Hope this is of some help to you.