January, the new year, itching to get starting with sowing seeds for the coming growing season.
We are up to our third year of the vegetable garden. First time trying out no-dig. After spreading home made compost in December the first weeds are popping up. The compost pile from the last 2 years was definitely not hot enough. I started monitoring the new pile and it got up to 55 degrees from time to time, so hopefully not as many weeds seeds in there for next year.
The first sowing of the year were some flowers. On January, the 5th. Sweet peas and salvia. For the first one we are trying out the toilet roll method. After germination of those seeds indoors, where the room temperature is about 20 degrees, I moved the seed tray into the unheated glass greenhouse. When the temperature will get low (close to freezing) I will get them inside. The salvia has also been germinated inside. In the morning I move it in the greenhouse to give it all the light it can get. Over night it resides indoors.
First of the vegetables to be sown are onions and leeks. On January, the 12th, same like last year. Comparing the onions from seed and sets from last year, I preferred the seeds ones, so will be doing that. But onions and leeks are multi-sown, so around 3 seeds to 1 cell.
The vegetables that got planted out first last year, cauliflower, broccoli and spinach, were also sowed. End of March they were already in the ground. They did amazing. We also started some basil, which did incredible in the plastic greenhouse last year, not so much outside.
As an experiment we are sowing some carrots inside. We did this also last year, although not so early and only in February.
On the flower front we weren't really on the ball really early. But this year we are starting off with some French Marigold, Dianthus and Bidens. Let's hope we don't forget to pot the flowers on like last year and some did really poorly. In the meantime the daffodils and tulips are starting the shoot up all over the place.
No tomatoes yet, like last year. They got too big before we could plant them out in the greenhouse in April. Same for the chilis.
In the vegetable garden we also move the rhubarb a bit further apart to give the all the possible space they need. They don't seem to care too much as they slowly starting to grow again. We also keep harvesting carrots and parsnips. Still 2 rows of carrots in the ground and half a row of parsnips. We'll be trying to store them in a jute sack in a cool and dark place and see how long they store for (they'll probably be all gone before any signs of decay will be visible).
The 2020 compost pile is already full up and we had to improvise to get a new one up.
In the mean time spinach (sown in august and already harvested once in November) and radish (sown in beginning of December) are slowly growing in the greenhouse. Also strawberries (second years) are still in there.
There is also a January 2020 overview of the vegetable garden on Youtube from the 1st of January.