January is a paper month. Nothing goes in the ground, so the work is deciding
what goes in when.
Under cover, this month
- Broad beans, Aquadulce, in root trainers
- Onions from seed, in modules, kept cold
- Sweet peas, soaked overnight first
Direct, once the soil is workable
- Garlic, if the autumn planting failed
- Shallots, pushed in rather than buried
- Early peas, under cloches, two weeks after the shallots
- Parsnips, last, because they will sit and sulk in cold ground and then rot
The rule behind the order
Everything that needs a long season goes first, everything that resents a cold
start goes last, and the gap between the two is exactly as long as your soil
takes to warm.
The parsnips are the test. Sown too early they germinate at a rate that makes
you think the seed was old. It was not. The ground was cold and the seed sat
in it for three weeks going soft.
What I am not sowing
- Tomatoes, because there is no heat until March
- Courgettes, for the same reason and also because four plants is three too
many and I do it every year anyway - Anything brassica, until the netting is repaired
The wrapped item above is the honest one. A list item that runs to two lines
is still one item, and a diary that pretends otherwise is a diary nobody
wrote in.
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