Hi there winter gardeners!

I got my seeds from The Organic Gardening Catalogue today. I have:
Purple Hot Pepper
Jumbo Sweet Pepper
Habanero
Ring o Fire
Cayenne Pepper

Tomato - Gardeners Delight
Tomato - Golden Sunrise
Tomato - San Marzano (Plum)
Tomato - Burpees Delicious

Aubergine - Black Beauty

Herbs - basil, marjoram and some other stuff.
Seed potatoes

My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do have a
small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if they'll fit). Not
sure what to do. I could sow them on the window sill but I don't want them
to get too leggy.

Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

--
Mark Allison
SQL Server MVP
http://www.allisonmitchell.com

In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do have a
| small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if they'll fit). Not
| sure what to do. I could sow them on the window sill but I don't want them
| to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

You can get away with the hardiest of plants because they are
adapted to growing slowly - so you plant them outside and they will
do that. But it won't work for warm-climate plants.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do have a
| small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if they'll fit). Not
| sure what to do. I could sow them on the window sill but I don't want them
| to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

You can get away with the hardiest of plants because they are
adapted to growing slowly - so you plant them outside and they will
do that. But it won't work for warm-climate plants.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

(Nick Maclaren) wrote in
:


In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do
| have a small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if
| they'll fit). Not sure what to do. I could sow them on the window
| sill but I don't want them to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

What Nick said. I dunno about seed potatoes or tomatos, but planting
peppers & aubergines early is a recipe for spindly plants that never do
as well as ones planted later in the year, (in my experience). I'd
leave them till April.

You can probably get the basil growing inside on a windowsill now, but
if not you can always sow some more later: packets usually have enough
for plenty of sowings. Look out for greenfly.

If you absolutely must plant now, try planting just one seed from each
packet on your windowsill. Then do the same each month from now to
April, then put the rest in the greenhouse. Bet you by July the April-
May sown ones are bigger than the rest!

I can't talk though: I couldn't resist planting the lisianthus seed I
got just before Christmas. They are just germinating now (southfacing
windowsill, unheated room)

Victoria
--
gardening on a north-facing hill
in South-East Cornwall
--

Thanks. I don't mind waiting - I want to plant each of these at the optimum
time and I wondered if it was a good time to get them in now. I will wait
till March then... Thanks for your replies Nick and Victoria.

--
Mark Allison


"Victoria Clare" wrote in message
.206...
(Nick Maclaren) wrote in
:


In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do
| have a small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if
| they'll fit). Not sure what to do. I could sow them on the window
| sill but I don't want them to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

What Nick said. I dunno about seed potatoes or tomatos, but planting
peppers & aubergines early is a recipe for spindly plants that never do
as well as ones planted later in the year, (in my experience). I'd
leave them till April.

You can probably get the basil growing inside on a windowsill now, but
if not you can always sow some more later: packets usually have enough
for plenty of sowings. Look out for greenfly.

If you absolutely must plant now, try planting just one seed from each
packet on your windowsill. Then do the same each month from now to
April, then put the rest in the greenhouse. Bet you by July the April-
May sown ones are bigger than the rest!

I can't talk though: I couldn't resist planting the lisianthus seed I
got just before Christmas. They are just germinating now (southfacing
windowsill, unheated room)

Victoria
--
gardening on a north-facing hill
in South-East Cornwall
--

Nick Maclaren6/1/04 11:44


In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do have a
| small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if they'll fit).
Not
| sure what to do. I could sow them on the window sill but I don't want them
| to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

You can get away with the hardiest of plants because they are
adapted to growing slowly - so you plant them outside and they will
do that. But it won't work for warm-climate plants.


Re the tomatoes: Admittedly, ours are grown in a professional prop house on
heated benches but our tomato seeds are in now. Ray tells me that when his
family grew them commercially, they sowed them on 26th November!
--

Sacha
(remove the 'x' to email me)

In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| Re the tomatoes: Admittedly, ours are grown in a professional prop house on
| heated benches but our tomato seeds are in now. Ray tells me that when his
| family grew them commercially, they sowed them on 26th November!

With horticultural lighting, I assume? You can certainly plant
out much earlier than I can, but I have trouble with weediness
sowing even in late February.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 6 Jan 2004 11:44:29 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:


In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do have a
| small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if they'll fit). Not
| sure what to do. I could sow them on the window sill but I don't want them
| to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

You can get away with the hardiest of plants because they are
adapted to growing slowly - so you plant them outside and they will
do that. But it won't work for warm-climate plants.

And I thought *I* was the Light Nazi! :-) A look at wunderground.com
reveals the following sunrise/sunset numbers for today:

Cambridge, UK: 8:07 AM GMT 4:02 PM GMT

Hampton, VA, USA: 7:19 AM EST 5:03 PM EST

Close to 2 hrs difference in sunlight, 'though of course this changes
as the seasons progress.

I usually started seeds in an unheated greenhouse (but with heating
mats) in late February. This allowed for at least one occassion of
either freezing (power failure) or broiling (warm day with a lot of
sun) all my seedlings and starting over. One failure-free season, I
eventually had 2' high, multi-transplanted, tomatoes before it was
reliably warm enough to plant outdoors (we go by "last frost date"
which is circa April 15th here).

On the whole, I agree with Nick. Once the plants pop up, you need a
lot of light for most of the things you mention. And while a heating
mat (is that the same as a propagator?) keeps seeds and seedlings
warm, tomatoes and particularly peppers don't like to be over-cool
when they've become adolescents.

Nick Maclaren wrote:

...but I have trouble with weediness...

Do you mean that the plants were small in size,
or that you were plagued by unwelcome "plants in the wrong place".
--
Nick Wagg

In article , Nick Wagg writes:
| Nick Maclaren wrote:
|
| ...but I have trouble with weediness...
|
| Do you mean that the plants were small in size,
| or that you were plagued by unwelcome "plants in the wrong place".

The former :-) Tall, spindly, and unhealthy. In some cases, I
scrapped them and sowed new ones.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article ,
Frogleg writes:
|
| And I thought *I* was the Light Nazi! :-) A look at wunderground.com
| reveals the following sunrise/sunset numbers for today:
|
| Cambridge, UK: 8:07 AM GMT 4:02 PM GMT
|
| Hampton, VA, USA: 7:19 AM EST 5:03 PM EST
|
| Close to 2 hrs difference in sunlight, 'though of course this changes
| as the seasons progress.

It's worse than that. Because the sun is lower in the north,
the light levels are closer to the square of the day length,
so Hampton is getting 45% more light. And that doesn't account
for the absorption effects (cloud and otherwise), which could
easily make that 45% into 90%.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

It's worse than that. Because the sun is lower in the north,
the light levels are closer to the square of the day length,
so Hampton is getting 45% more light. And that doesn't account
for the absorption effects (cloud and otherwise), which could
easily make that 45% into 90%.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Thanks. I live in Bedfordshire, so my predicament is not as bad as living as
far north as Inverness. So, you reckon around March time for all my seeds?

Thanks everyone.

Nick Maclaren6/1/04 2:52


In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| Re the tomatoes: Admittedly, ours are grown in a professional prop house
on
| heated benches but our tomato seeds are in now. Ray tells me that when his
| family grew them commercially, they sowed them on 26th November!

With horticultural lighting, I assume? You can certainly plant
out much earlier than I can, but I have trouble with weediness
sowing even in late February.


I don't know if Ray used such lighting in Upshire but will check later. But
we don't use any here. I am only talking about tomato seeds, though and not
the other, more exotic, things mentioned by the OP. Once the seedlings are
ready for potting on, they go into 'long toms' for the few that we sell and
our own go into bags of compost and are kept in the biggest glasshouse.
And as an aside, so many people commented favourably on my personal hanging
basket of 'Tumbler' tomatoes that we're going to plant some up for sale this
year, along with the more usual flowery ones.

--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the 'x' to email me)

Nick Maclaren6/1/04 2:52


In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| Re the tomatoes: Admittedly, ours are grown in a professional prop house
on
| heated benches but our tomato seeds are in now. Ray tells me that when his
| family grew them commercially, they sowed them on 26th November!

With horticultural lighting, I assume? You can certainly plant
out much earlier than I can, but I have trouble with weediness
sowing even in late February.


I don't know if Ray used such lighting in Upshire but will check later. But
we don't use any here. I am only talking about tomato seeds, though and not
the other, more exotic, things mentioned by the OP. Once the seedlings are
ready for potting on, they go into 'long toms' for the few that we sell and
our own go into bags of compost and are kept in the biggest glasshouse.
And as an aside, so many people commented favourably on my personal hanging
basket of 'Tumbler' tomatoes that we're going to plant some up for sale this
year, along with the more usual flowery ones.

--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the 'x' to email me)

The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:

In article ,
"Mark Allison" nomail@please writes:
|
| My question is, on the packets of most of these seeds, it says sow
| December - March. I have a 12x8 greenhouse, but it's unheated. I do
have a
| small electric propagator - should I sow them in there (if they'll
fit). Not
| sure what to do. I could sow them on the window sill but I don't
want them
| to get too leggy.
|
| Ideas? I fancy sowing them this week.

Far too early. Don't even think of sowing seeds for a month yet,
and possibly even longer for warm-climate plants. The problem
isn't the temperature - it is the light, almost total lack of.
Subtropicals etc. are adapted to growing fast once they start, and
will not do well if kept warm and half-dark.

You can get away with the hardiest of plants because they are
adapted to growing slowly - so you plant them outside and they will
do that. But it won't work for warm-climate plants.

I have a redundant sunbed in the attic. Could the light problem be overcome,
if I was to rig that up and bypass the automatic time control?

--
AnneJ
ICQ #:- 119531282