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igenlodeSeduced by the warm earth, I refilled the trough with saved compost (discovering yet more large worms living in the bag!) and scattered some of last year's free packet of "bee-friendly seed" on one half of it, which judging by the illustrations on the packet is basically the same thing as the 'cornfield mix' which produces corn-marigolds, cornflowers, corn-chamomile and poppies...
I planted a small pot of saved coriander seed in the open, and put dill and pak choi in the mini-greenhouse, rather randomly. I also split up the baby garlic yet further -- each little clove has rounded out quite nicely into a separate mini-bulb, although in order to get a usable crop I should need a couple of dozen pots, each growing a full-sized individual garlic plant!
And I put a small pot with some of the seed from my two saved Demon Red chilli pods onto the kitchen windowsill (currently growing swede tops) to see if I could get it to germinate a little earlier this year -- I didn't plant them until April last year, and they took forever to get started. This year I have a lot more than six seeds so can afford to experiment a little!
(I haven't actually managed to use up all of my *previous* year's crop of dried chillies yet -- I still have two or three left, although I have been using the unripe Demon Red ones in recipes, which definitely have some heat in -- so I am very conscious that if I do succeed in getting any plants this year I shall end up giving away all or most of them and/or the fruit. But I feel that I can't just store home-grown seed indefinitely for multiple years and expect it to obligingly germinate once I have, in fact, eaten all the previous crop...! So I probably need to produce at least one fresh chilli.
It's probably not worth using the remaining 'big' chilli seed, though, although I kept the seed that was unused last year just in case. The whole point of putting so much work into the non-F1 Demon Red chillies was in order to obtain an enduring strain better suited to my local conditions; I just need to check now that they do in fact breed true in the next generation.)
Oh, and the mystery crop of large seedlings which I have been removing from the bag of 'sweepings' (the random vegetable material I didn't want to store with the spent compost because I knew it would have a high percentage of seeds in it) turn out to be calendulas, judging by the one that had its curved seed still attached. I saved a few of the smaller ones and tucked them into the blind narcissus pot I had used for the other seedling (which failed to survive; I don't know if I damaged the ridiculously long stem when planting it out, or if it fell over and broke from its own weight!)
I planted a small pot of saved coriander seed in the open, and put dill and pak choi in the mini-greenhouse, rather randomly. I also split up the baby garlic yet further -- each little clove has rounded out quite nicely into a separate mini-bulb, although in order to get a usable crop I should need a couple of dozen pots, each growing a full-sized individual garlic plant!
And I put a small pot with some of the seed from my two saved Demon Red chilli pods onto the kitchen windowsill (currently growing swede tops) to see if I could get it to germinate a little earlier this year -- I didn't plant them until April last year, and they took forever to get started. This year I have a lot more than six seeds so can afford to experiment a little!
(I haven't actually managed to use up all of my *previous* year's crop of dried chillies yet -- I still have two or three left, although I have been using the unripe Demon Red ones in recipes, which definitely have some heat in -- so I am very conscious that if I do succeed in getting any plants this year I shall end up giving away all or most of them and/or the fruit. But I feel that I can't just store home-grown seed indefinitely for multiple years and expect it to obligingly germinate once I have, in fact, eaten all the previous crop...! So I probably need to produce at least one fresh chilli.
It's probably not worth using the remaining 'big' chilli seed, though, although I kept the seed that was unused last year just in case. The whole point of putting so much work into the non-F1 Demon Red chillies was in order to obtain an enduring strain better suited to my local conditions; I just need to check now that they do in fact breed true in the next generation.)
Oh, and the mystery crop of large seedlings which I have been removing from the bag of 'sweepings' (the random vegetable material I didn't want to store with the spent compost because I knew it would have a high percentage of seeds in it) turn out to be calendulas, judging by the one that had its curved seed still attached. I saved a few of the smaller ones and tucked them into the blind narcissus pot I had used for the other seedling (which failed to survive; I don't know if I damaged the ridiculously long stem when planting it out, or if it fell over and broke from its own weight!)