First sow your seed...

Well, that's the start of the season proper for me. Tonight after I got home from work, plugged in the heated propogator, set the thermostat at 22 degrees, soaked the capillary matting and sowed my first seeds.
The local show has a class just for members of the local gardening club, which this year is to grow a chilli plant in a pot - the variety being Basket of Fire. I have agreed to start these off and grow them on until the 9th April when the plants will be distributed to the members for them to grow on or kill as they see fit, until the show on 18th August. So tonight my first seeds sown were 50 x Basket of Fire chillies.

 When I ordered the Basket of Fire seeds, I received a free packet of seeds for Chilli Numex Big Jim, so these were next on the list. These will be grown on in my greenhouse - either the plants are huge or the guy in the photo has tiny paws.....

Finally on the chilli front, I sowed my own chillies - Ring of Fire which I purchased from Shelleys Seeds. Again these will be grown in pots.

And just before it got too dark to see the seeds, I sowed four pots of Lyon Prizetaker for culinary leeks.

 I know everyone has different methods, but for what it's worth, here is how I sow my culinary leeks.
Fill a 1 litre pot with compost, soak it from the bottom and leave to drain. Take a pinch of leek seeds (my pinch equates to about 25 seeds) and sprinkle as evenly as possible on the surface. Cover with a fine layer of compost et voila ! Not terribly scientific I know but this is the method I used when I was growing about 3000 leeks per year so it had to be quick. When planting time comes, knock the clump from the pot, cut the roots back to about 2", seperate the plants and place into pre-dibbed holes, water in and that's it.

Polytunnel wind up and wind down

Got a text message from Finlay (the farmer I rent the ground from ) that there was a tear in the rear of my tunnel polythene and given the weather predictions for the high winds and storms for today, I set off this morning with a brand new roll of duct tape (or is it duck tape) and sure enough there was a rip about a metre long, but given that at the time there was no rain (so the polythene was dry) and very little wind (so the polythene wasn't flapping about) I soon has it taped up and back under control.
I went back out with Niamh (3 year old daughter / princess) this afternoon where we picked another huge pile of tomatoes, completely defoliating the plants as we went, to let those fruits still to ripen do so a wee bit quicker.

We also picked a load of cukes and decided to uproot the plants and dismantle their frame too, as I am quite honestly, sick of eating them, though I do like them a lot.
I also took the opporchancity to remove the three courgette plants for the same reason, though I now have four good sized courgette / marrows on the shelves in the tunnel - possibly Marrow Rum later in the year!
We also picked the very last of the calabrese, a savoy cabbage, runner beans and some bell peppers.
As some of you may remember, I had a go at a Giant Marrow this year but even with hand pollination I failed to get any fruits to set - well, left alone with Good Ole Mama Nature, it now has three largish fruits on it , so I gave it a bit of TLC and will wait and see how big the buggers get.

The pot baside each Marrow is a 1 litre pot for scale and the second marrow is considerably paler as it was hiding amongst really dense foliage. I have to say though, that I will not be growing this again - at least not in the polytunnel - I expected it to take up a fair bit of space but this thing would grow over the top of a triffid - not the best use of space ! If the fruits reach a decent size, I may take them to a local craft fayre where I will be selling my Chilli Sauces (more on that in a bit) and have a Guess The Weight Competition for charity.
So still growing in the tunnel are Sweet (Bell) Peppers, cauliflower, PSB and chillies - Jalapeno and Cayenne.
Now I know a lot of people grow chillies and that there are probably lots of people who treat them with kid gloves and spoil them rotten. Well, I am the polar opposite of that approach. I do take care of them til they are about 6 - 8 inches in height then they get transplanted into the polytunnel soil (which I admit is pretty nice and rich), get watered until they are established and growing away well, then they get ignored -and I mean COMPLETELY ignored - no watering , nothing, other than tying in as they get bigger. They seem to thrive on this laissez faire attitude as I get bumper crops every year and the chillies seem to be a wee bit hotter than those from pampered plants that I taste. I do grow quite a lot of chillies(between 60 and 120 plants depending on available polytunnel floor space (closer to 60 this year due to the triffid in the corner) and these are used solely as ingredients in the two chilli sauces and the chilli jelly that I make, which I sell locally - I always sell out completely and have already got advance orders in for this year. Anyway, this year looks like another bumper year and I have quite a few turning a lovely shade of red at the moment so may start picking them in the next week or so. The other main ingredients in the sauces / jellies are onions, bell peppers and apples - all of which I grow myself too.

Polytunnel update -July 5th

I was across at the tunnel for a bit this evening to see what's what. I don't manage to get across there as ofetn as I would like due to pressures of work and family but as the three ladies in my life are away at my mum's house for a couple of days I thought I better take advantage of the opperchancity, before coming home to get the bathroom painting completed for my wife coming home tomorrow.
With the exception of the stuff I am growing in my garden (tatties, stump carrots, beetroot, broad beans, turnips, shallots, culinary onions and french beans, everything else in is my tunnel as I have given myself this year to sort out growing area outside at the tunnel ready for next year.
So first off - the rhubarb - this continually amazes me in the tunnel - I have three crowns and they all produce lovely long red stalks for about 9 months of the year. All it gets in return is a thick mulch of well rotted manure every winter

 This year I want to try and get a set of tomatoes for our local show and to this end I am growing Cedrico and Shirley. After seeking some advice on the NVS forum, I am going to thin thr trusses on 5 of the 10 Cedrico plants and 2 of the 5 Shirley plants and leave the others intact . The toms are looking good, though the plants have looked better - heat stress after the last couple of days - the tunnel gets very warm even with both sets of double doors open. This is an intact truss of Cedrico.

I am growing about 80 chilli plants this year -mainly Cayenne with some Jalapeno too - these will be used solely for the purpose of making my Spitfire and Hurricane Sauces in the back end of the year, though  I might throw a couple into the show if they are ready in time.The cayennes have just produced their first flowers.

Now for something I am really pleased with. For the last 5 years I have tried to grow cauliflowers indoors without any success - I have tried various varieties but I always ended up with brown sunburnt curds, despite the seed catalogues promises of curd protection from strong leaf growth. Well, this year I tries a variety from Johnsons called Cheesy F1. Look at the photos and see what you think about the leaf protection for the curd - you would almost miss the fact that the curd was there at all. The first photo shows the cauli in situ, and the second shows the two I brought home - the smaller of the two is the one photographed in situ.

Next we have the aubergines - these were devastated last year by earwigs which reduced the leaves to lace, and therefore seriously affecting growth and fruiting - no such problems this year - really healthy plantswith  loads of flowers . Once fruits have set I will remove the surplus to leave a maximum of five per plant.

As my wife is not a fan of summer cabbage but loves the Savoy types, I have a pointed variety called Samantha in the tunnel this year and the first head is nearly ready for harvesting!

And finally Medwyn's triffid has really exploded this week. Again, as advised by those who know more about these things than I do (but I'm learning all the time) on the NVS forum, I have hand pollinated 5 female flowers and will keep an eyse on them - if all 5 set fruits, I will thin these down to two. I have also thrown soil over some of the stems - this apparently encourages the plant to put down more roots and so help feed the plant. The only problem is that my courgettes will have to be sacrificed or they will smothered by the marrow - no big deal there though as we have already had loads.