These tomato seeds are like gold dust

NEXT POST

I try to avoid spending money on anything to do with the greenhouse: the idea is to grow things that will produce seeds or compost for next year - like a tech startup that's profitable from day one and doesn't need to rely on venture capital.

However, I usually buy the odd packet of seeds and this year, went down to my local garden centre to pick up a packet of tomato seeds and one packet of radish seeds. It was only when I got to the till that I found that the tomato seeds cost £4.99, which seemed excessive.

I didn't realise the price was written on the back of the packet and asked the person serving me whether she'd got it right. She showed me she had. I said they were expensive. She agreed and had a look at the packet. 

"Well, they're 'the exhibitor's favourite'," she read out. 

"Yeah right," I said. 

But I decided I'd give the exhibitor's favourite a go, and see whether they'd be my favourite too.

Back in the greenhouse, I opened the little white inner packet, which appeared to be empty. Oh no, there was a tiny little collection of about a dozen seeds in the bottom corner. There were so few that there was no question of trying to sprinkle them onto the soil: they'd all come out at once and land too close together. 

Instead, I extracted them each by hand and put them into the soil. Afterwards I thought there must have been a mistake. Surely some machine in a factory had gone wrong and failed to put the right number of seeds into the packet. 

I decided to email the manufacturers, Thompson and Morgan, point out their mistake and and ask for another packet. Back in the house, I had a proper look at the back of the packet and saw this:

"Average 15 seeds". How mean can you get? Surely the actual cost of the seeds is the least expensive part of their business? Still, if I'd looked, I'd have been warned. That's an average cost of 33 pence per seed. They must be literally worth their weight in gold.

So far, only the radish seeds are sprouting. I hope those precious tomato seeds aren't just going to disappear forever. 

NEXT POST

Ten vegetables for 2016

NEXT POST

I have too many half used packets of vegetable seeds. I don't want to waste them, but nor do I want to waste my time preparing the soil and planting them if they're too old ever to germinate. I'm abandoning them for the moment.

Instead, as kind of new year resolution, I went crazy and spent £3.99 on a Homebase bumper pack of ten kinds of vegetable seeds. They're not particularly exotic - just things like  marrow, parsnip, spinach and onion. But they come with easy to use directions about when and how to plant, and so I'm thinking that if I can just get them out of the packet and into the soil at the right time, it could be an easy way to produce something useful from the greenhouse this year.

I started today with the 'all-the-year-round cauliflower'. I can't be bothered to plant seeds with measured spaces between them, so I just scatter them into a pot, cover them with a bit more soil, and will transplant the best ones when they pop up.

If I keep it up, by February, I should have leeks, onions and parsnips under way too.

The instructions don't say anything about a greenhouse, but I'm assuming it will be frost-free, and that they should have a better chance in there than outside. Of course I'll have to water them, although the greenhouse seems permanently damp at this time of year, so that shouldn't be too much work.

NEXT POST

A quest for shelf-improvement

NEXT POST

So far, buying the greenhouse has been a bit of an extravagance. As well as the greenhouse itself, there was the cost of building a concrete base, and paying someone to assemble it.

But from now on it's going to be re-use and recycle - in other words, a return to my usual cheapskate style.

So instead of buying shelves from the Greenhouse People, from whom I bought the greenhouse (although I must admit they look rather good), I made some myself from leftovers.

They may be a little narrower than you might wish, limited by the width of the plank I sliced up to make them, but I reckoned there wasn't going to a lot of jostling and horseplay in the greenhouse, and not much wind either, so that if they were sturdy enough, they'd probably do the job.

Now I'm starting to get an idea of how much I'm going to be able to fit into the greenhouse. My son says he wants to see every cubic centimetre filled with biomass. I'd rather aim for a kind of scenic grotto with enough room for a human being to visit comfortably, or maybe even to sit and read in pleasant surroundings.

NEXT POST

And here it is

NEXT POST

The man came yesterday afternoon and put it together. By the time I got home, it was done.

I suppose I could have done it myself, but there are stories online about it being a mind-boggling puzzle. Even the greenhouse company said it would take me two days. They have a list of recommended people who build them, and the man charged £160. It took him about four hours. It did mean drilling into the concrete, so it's not quite the same as an Ikea bookcase.

And I must say I think it looks really good. It fits in nicely and is big enough inside without dominating the garden.

The only problem is that one piece of glass was missing. The man told the company and they say they'll deliver it next week. So we have a small hole in the roof for the moment.

It cost £600 including delivery and a self-opening window (for when it gets too hot inside). That was on a special offer, but here are the product details. The people from the company, the Greenhouse People, who I spoke to on the phone were friendly and knowledgeable and willing to discuss all the details about the concrete base and other things I wanted to check on. Even the man who delivered it (and five other greenhouses on his round trip to London from Stoke-on-Trent) was very pleasant.

NEXT POST