Expensive tomato seeds: I take it all back

Last time I was whinging about the cost of the packet of tomato seeds I'd just bought. Well, I'm not whinging any more. I actually have twelve very decent-looking tomato plants from them, which must be a strike rate of close to 90 per cent.

Don't you love the smell of tomato plants - even before there are any tomatoes on them? It's a little sharp but somehow incredibly healthy.

So I take it all back, Thompson and Morgan, they are obviously quality seeds, if small in number.

I am watering the plants conscientiously with a special tomato feed supplement every evening and it seems to be working. The only problem with the plant above, the biggest, is that if there's a storm, it's so big and heavy that it could easily break. 

Still, the problems of success! 

These tomato seeds are like gold dust

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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. 

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From greenhouse to gut?

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I hate that phrase you hear on food programmes on the radio: 'from farm to fork'. But what would the greenhouse equivalent be: 'from greenhouse to gut'? 'From greenhouse to gustatory experience'? 'From greenhouse to getting supper'?

Well anyway, if we had a suitable phrase, we could have used it yesterday, because we went from this:

And this:

To this:

And this:

And jolly good they were, though I say so myself.

I planted both courgette and marrow seeds in the greenhouse a few months ago, but I can't remember which were where. I suspect the darker one here was a marrow and could have carried on growing more and the lighter one was a courgette. They seemed to taste the same though, and probably both better than a big marrow would do in a month or so. 

When you use a kitchen knife outside to cut a vegetable, you're turning something from the world of the garden into something for the world of the kitchen. Where previously, a bit of mud and the odd insect were perfectly acceptable, now tiny blemishes are examined forensically and removed before cooking and consumption. Imagine having to clean the greenhouse to the standard of the kitchen. 

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Courgettes v marrows

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Only a week ago, I planted several lots of seeds from the bumper pack I bought back in January: courgettes, marrows and onions. I hope I'm not too late to be starting now (like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman).

I am hugely impressed with the courgettes:

Especially when the marrows look like this:

I haven't grown onions before, so I don't know what to expect from them. I've planted some outside and some in the greenhouse. There are signs of life from the ones in the greenhouse, but I can't really believe I'm ever going to end up with real onions:

Finally, although it's nothing to do with the greenhouses, I couldn't ignore the colour of our new rhododendron, recently acquired from a garden centre and therefore, in my mind, cheating. Its colours are so bright that they practically broke my camera. Is there a colour equivalent of over-exposure - because that's what I was getting? The only way I could try to stop this picture burning out (or, as I say, the colour equivalent) was to under-expose and then brighten in Photoshop - and even that didn't completely work. Still, I'm not complaining: they look great:

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The caulis are coming

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Yesterday my eye was drawn to the window by a sudden bright light in the garden. The sun had come out on January 30th.

I went into the greenhouse and found it was warm enough to produce those delicious soily, leafy smells that are as much a part of the pleasure of having a greenhouse as what you see in it. 

Could it really be 29 degrees, or do I have a thermometer programmed to tell people what they want to hear?  

Well, maybe it's right. The cauliflower seeds I planted three weeks ago have already burst into life. 

Maybe Homebase's promise of "Cauliflower All The Year Round" will be fulfilled. Or at least, I could have a glut of cauliflower all at once, in about April or May.

And there's more. Last weekend I managed to sprinkle a big pot with Parsnip Student seeds ("very good long-rooted narrow cored heritage variety"). They're not due to be harvested until October at the earliest, but there's no harm in giving them a good run at it. 

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Ten vegetables for 2016

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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.

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Where's that greenhouse effect?

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I know that conditions in a greenhouse in South West London in early May aren't exactly like the tropical rainforest. But I thought my new greenhouse might at least grow things as well as they grow on the window-sill in the kitchen. Not so far.

Here is my first crop, started on the window-sill and about to graduate to the greenhouse.

They're a collection of seeds that came in a gift pack, called - a little too cutely - "Psychedelic Salad": unusual coloured beetroot, cucumbers etc.

And here they are in the greenhouse, ten days later:

Radishes

Spring onions

Beetroot

The lettuces have all been eaten by something, the spring onions look anorexic, and the beetroot and radishes are all over the place.

I have high hopes for the cucumber, which actually look quite healthy:

But going back to the window-sill question, more recently I planted some tomato and sweetcorn seeds on both the window-sill and in the greenhouse. So far, only the window-sill ones are doing well:

Sweetcorn

Tomatoes

There's no sign of the rest of these packets, which I planted in the greenhouse. I've always believed in the greenhouse effect, but in my garden, it seems a bit of a myth.

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