We don’t sow many seeds in March because we’ve found the low levels of light at this time of year tend to cause the plants to become etiolated very quickly.
This is what we’ve chosen to sow in March.
Peas – Champion of England seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue.
We grew this variety of pea last year and the peas were fabulous but the cropping season was over rather quickly. This year we shall extend the cropping season by making sequential sowings of peas. I’m planning to sow seeds every month until June…… I’m also thinking of investing in a new chest freezer…. I’m ever the optimist!
I’ve sowed the seeds individually in deep root trainers and I’ve placed them outside in a propagator. They are in individual modules because pea plants don’t like root disturbance and we’ve found these root trainers work quite well. The idea behind placing them outside is to try to prevent the young plants from becoming etiolated. I’ve not tried this before so lets see if it works or not.
Champion of England peas grown in 2014
Celeriac – Monarch seeds from Mr Fothergill’s
These seeds conveniently came with a gardening magazine at the very time we were considering growing celeriac… it was a sign! This is my experimental vegetable of the year! We’ve not grown it before but we both enjoy eating this rather odd looking vegetable.
The seeds are tiny and they need light to germinate. I have scattered the seeds sparingly on moist compost. I have covered the module with cling film to aid germination, a top tip from my gardening genius friend Tony. They have also been placed in a propagator and left inside on a south facing windowsill. The seeds take between 2 to 3 weeks to germinate. Rather slow for my liking but I’m assuming this is why the process is started in March.
Broccoli – Summer Purple seeds from Thompson & Morgan
Another experimental vegetable, we’re not grown broccoli before either. We’ve chosen this variety because it doesn’t need vernalisation (winter chill) to produce the purple spears. This variety is also fairly heat tolerant.
Sow the seeds from March until June at intervals to ensure a long cropping season. I plan to sow some seeds towards the end of March and then every six weeks until June. We should be able to harvest the broccoli from July until November.
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