Ciaran’s Omnipurpose Blog

You may have read about the thrilling and gripping adventures I had in the garden last year here.

Well this year, I'm starting early. I had already prepared the frozen soil by digging it up in late February. Now, I've pulled together something that vaguely resembles a project plan for my garden.

Yesterday, I sauntered out of the house for my idea of retail therapy, the garden centre and bought:

• Sweetcorn
• Mint
• Dill
• Chives
• Coriander
• Jalapeno chilli peppers
• Mange tout
• Tomatoes
• French beef tomatoes (variety: Marmande)
• Olive-shaped cherry tomatoes (variety: Sweet Olive)
• Blight-resistant standard tomatoes (variety: Ferline F1)
• And sunflowers to brighten up the house!

Here's a snap of the seedtray system I'm using. It will allow me to grow a lot of individual plants that I can quickly prick out. I've got about 120 seeds sown in 3 trays. I'm also using 20 "peat pots", which are designed to rot over time in the ground. The idea of this is to minimise the disturbance to the roots of the seedlings when transplanting. I read somewhere that this was especially important for sweetcorn

140 plants is a lot! My garden doesn't really have a huge amount of room. Last year I had about 15 tomato plants on the go and the garden was like a jungle. So I think this year, I'll be looking to pick a good mixture of seedlings to grow on to full plants and give the rest away. I didn't have any trouble finding homes for the dozens of tomato plants I raised from seed last year, so this year should be no different, and it seems that sweetcorn isn't all that tricky to grow either, so these should prove unusual and popular gifts too!

I've got the seeds germinating in the loft at the moment under the window. With any luck, I should see some shoots in a week or so!