Early Peas, more Shallots, and frost in the Greenhouse

Frost

It wasn’t damping off! How stupid I am. I tend to forget that, whatever the forecast says, the temperature is 2 or 3 degrees colder at the allotment – we are in a frost pocket near the river. Stupid!!  The damage to my seedlings was frost, nothing else. I was seduced by the sunny weather and brought them down to the greenhouse far too early.  First the brassicas and then the tomatoes. What was I thinking!!

It was Peter in the allotment next door, who helped my penny drop - he grows his ultra-early potatoes in his greenhouse border and they had their tops nipped off by the frost too.

I have started a new batch of everything in the propagator and will keep the caulis and cabbages in the shelter of the conservatory until they are much more sturdy, and the tomatoes until well into the spring. I used cauliflower igloo this time – they produce smaller heads.

First-Early Peas

I prepared the pea bed a while back by laying planks along the middle and then erecting a short netting support fence along the middle of each half. This week the first peas, meteor, were already a couple of inches high in their modules and were ready to put out. These are a round-seeded variety - less sweet but more hardy than the later, wrinkle-seeded varieties. Surprisingly about a quarter of the seedlings had failed, even though I pre-sprouted them in my bean sprouter first. Nevertheless I still had enough for my row. I planted them next to one of the  fences and immediately leant strips of netting over them to protect against the birds.

Shallots

The shallots I put out in modules a few weeks ago are now growing strongly. Even though they were not all showing above, when I lifted them from their modules, there was a thick mass of roots filling the bottom of the modules. So I put them out with the rest that I planted earlier.

I have to say that already there is little difference between those that I planted in December directly in the soil, and those that I started in modules. The autumn-planted ones are slightly further ahead. I expect the rest to catch up, but we shall see.