You Must Sow These Seeds in March

At last! Spring time has finally sprung! The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming and life is good for the humble gardener. At this time of year there is much that can be sown, but Ben has chosen a selection of favorites to cover all bases: some solidly sturdy vegetables, everyone’s favourite warm season crop, glorious greens and a reliable companion flower that won’t let you down, served sunny side up.

Fancy growing some splendid spuds? Watch our Potato Growing Masterclass:

Feeling spicy? Here’s our video on growing chili peppers:

And here’s our Seed Starting Masterclass:

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Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
Spring has sprung!
Of course this is also the 
Gardener’s busiest time of year,
juggling sowing, seedlings and young plants.
The growing season starts here
and today we will be sowing 
some solidly sound vegetables,
everyone’s favorite warm season crop
and to finish, the sunniest, most soul 
soaring veggie garden flower of all,
so do stick around for that.
Best get cracking then.
And what better place to start than with one crop
that sums up summer perfectly more than any other,
why the tomato of course.
The Tomato encapsulates the 
bounty of those warmer months;
richly aromatic, sweet and juicy,
there’s no beating it for flavor,
made all the more intense if you grow it yourself.
I’ve got three varieties for sowing today:
the sweetest golden cherry 
tomato for adding to salads,
a beautiful plum or paste 
tomato for turning into sauces
and a blight resistant 
tomato for growing outdoors.
Now last year I had real 
problems with tomato blight
and I noticed one variety managed to resist it,
so I’ve gone and bought that variety.
No tomato is completely 100% resistant to blight
but there are some varieties 
that show some good resistance.
If you’re growing your tomatoes outside where 
they will be exposed to spores carried on the wind
then you might like to consider one 
of these blight resistant tomatoes.
So I’m just using a sieved 
all purpose potting mix,
I’m firming it down a little bit, there we go.
Now these are really fresh 
seeds, I bought them yesterday,
so they’ll last a couple of years
so any I don’t use I’ll fold 
over and keep until next year
and maybe the year after too so 
I don’t have to sow all of them.
So I’m going to space the 
seeds in the pot so they’re
as far apart from each other as possible
to give them a little room to grow
before I need to transplant 
them into their own pots.
There we go.
And then to finish, just another little sprinkling 
of our potting mix over the top like that.
And then gently pat it down.
Do not forget to label.
Now if you’re sowing just 
one variety of one vegetable
and you know what the seedlings look like,
then obviously you can get away without labelling.
But if you’re sowing a few 
varieties of the same vegetable,
well the seedlings are going 
to look the same aren’t they!
So it’s very very easy to get mixed up
and I say that from bitter experience.
I make a point of labelling 
as soon as I’ve sown now.
So these have had a good water now
and I’m going to pop them into 
this simple humidity dome here
which will create a lovely 
cozy warm and humid environment
for our seeds to germinate in.
You you could also just secure a 
piece of clear plastic over your pots,
that works too.
These guys are going onto my heat mat to germinate
and they should appear within 
about a week to two weeks.
And once they have they’ll come off here.
Now if you don’t have a heat mat, don’t worry.
Any warm and sunny window sill 
should do the trick as well.
It’s probably the last outing for my heat mat for 
this spring because my other warm seasoned veggies
drum roll please…. are growing 
away under here really nicely.
I’ve got some chili peppers and eggplant 
or aubergie in here for example.
If you haven’t started these off yet 
please do hurry cause time is running out
and I will link to a video on 
how to start them off down below.
And then when it’s warmed up a little bit more
I’ll move these seedlings out into the greenhouse
when temperatures in there 
are at least 50 F or 10 C
and that way I can make the 
most use of the outside light,
the natural light and save 
on grow light running costs.
Once the seedlings are up I will 
transfer them into their own pots
and then grow them on, initially inside and 
then bring them out here to continue growing.
Then they will be planted outside, 
my blight resistant tomatoes,
and the others in here in this greenhouse border.
Now in here I know I’ll get a really 
good crop no matter what the summer,
whether it’s a scorcher or a complete wash out
and I am sure we will be checking in on 
those tomatoes as the season progresses.
It’s time to sow two vegetable 
garden staples: parsnips and leeks,
which will form the backbone 
to my winter vegetable garden.
Now I know no one wants to be thinking 
of winter just as we’re leaving it,
but forward planning is a must.
Knowing what to sow when can be 
a bit of a logistical conundrum
but I’m finding the Garden 
Planner invaluable for this.
It keeps a track of what needs sowing when,
based on data from your local weather station.
Really very handy.
If you’d like to try it for yourself for 
free then I’ll pop a link to it down below.
Now then, leeks.
For some reason Rosie absolutely loves leeks 
and rolls about in them, flattening them.
I wondered why she had oniony breath.
But leeks and other alliums like onions 
and garlic are not good for dogs at all
so I need to find a way to kind of fence them 
off from her and keep them well away from her.
In the meantime though, to keep her safe I’m 
going to start them off inside in the greenhouse.
Traditionally leeks are sown 
into pots or into the ground
and then lifted up once they’re about pencil size
to then pop into their own dibbered holes.
It’s a very satisfying process.
You dibber your hole, pop in the leek,
then simply fill the holes 
with water and walk away.
The leeks then grow on to 
produce lovely long white stems,
because much of the stem 
sits below the soil surface
so they naturally get blanched.
I’m taking the alternative tack.
My leeks are going into plug trays
and I’m going to multi-sow them.
They’ll be grown on in these 
plugs as clusters of seedlings
then planted out as they 
are, no thinning required.
And then they’ll be grown on to harvest 
as clusters from autumn onwards.
Right, I’m going to sow little pinches of seeds 
between four and up to six seeds per plug here.
I’ve chosen a variety that is 
resistant to rust by the way,
which is a common disease of leeks
so that should hopefully avoid that.
So I’ve just covered them over a bit and
I’ll give these of water shortly
and I expect anywhere from 
three to six seedlings per plug.
And they’ll be grown on in here throughout spring
and then planted out later on in the spring
or possibly if I pot them them 
on after my early potatoes.
That way I’ll get twice the number of 
crops from the same piece of ground.
Now if you don’t have lots of 
room for leeks, don’t worry.
I reckon they look really 
attractive in flower borders.
They’ve got lovely glaucous upright 
foliage that thrusts out of the ground
and I think it gives a really kind 
of designer led eye to your garden,
so they can go just about anywhere.
What do you reckon?
I always had a bit of a nervousness 
around starting off parsnips,
that they might be tricky customers,
but in my experience I found 
them pretty reliable germinators.
The important thing is to make sure that 
the soil is warm enough, that is crucial.
And you also have to remember that 
they take their time to rise and shine;
three and even up to four weeks.
So they’re going in here.
I’ve raked the soil nice and level.
This had a good top of compost back in the autumn  
so there’s good fertility 
in here for our parsnips.
So I’m going to start by marking out 
my rows here about 1 ft or 30 cm apart.
Now I’m going to carefully space out the 
seeds about an inch or 2 to 3 cm apart.
Now these are good size seeds 
so they’re nice and easy to sow.
Because they take so long to germinate
I’m just going to pop little 
sticks at the end of each row,
just to kind of mark out the position.
and now simply cover them back over.
Now because the parsnips do 
take a long time to come up
I’m going to be a bit opportunistic and sow 
something really quick growing in between them.
And can you guess what it is?
It is radishes.
Now these guys will be up and kind 
of well on the way to maturity
by the time the parsnips come up
and then they’ll be harvested well long 
before the parsnips need the extra space,
so it’s a good way of getting a little 
bit more from the same piece of ground.
So again I’ve made my row an 
inch or half an inch 1 cm deep
and then just kind of sprinkling the seeds  
along about half an inch or 
a centimeter apart like that.
The radishes should be up within about a week
and they shouldn’t really need thinning.
The parsnips on the other hand, once 
they’re up I will thin them in stages
until they are about 6 in or 15 cm apart.
If you’ve never tried parsnips before, please do,
they are the royalty amongst root vegetables.
I love them roasted with a little 
bit of honey, absolutely delicious.
And they are generally trouble-free.
Parsnip seed doesn’t last very long though,
so do be sure to use fresh seed.
I love my greens and it’s time for the 
sowing of the first greens of the year.
And I’m going to be sowing collard greens,
which are just a kind of non 
– heading type of cabbage.
Now last year I grew some 
lovely head forming cabbages
but the problem was I got slugs 
interwoven with the leaves,
they kind of got properly in there.
So by growing something with a more open habit
I’m hoping the slugs will be less hidden away
and we’ll find it less of an attractive 
home, that’s the plan anyhow.
Oh and collard greens can be 
harvested cut and come again style,
by just twisting off the leaves as you need them,
so you can keep them growing,
no great big heart of cabbage to use all at once.
In the interest of saving space I’m going to sow 
them into this small pot here just to start with,
then once they’re up I can transfer 
them into their own plugs to grow on
and then they’ll be planted out 
into their own dedicated bed
enriched with plenty of compost
and I’ll set them about 18 in or 
45 cm apart in both directions.
This is a great month for planting potatoes.
Now do check out our last 
video on the splendid spud,
when I show you how to plant 
up containers like this
and the difference between 
determinate and indeterminate potatoes
and how to use that to your advantage.
And here are my main crop potatoes, 
a variety called ‘sarpo mira’.
Both potatoes and tomatoes are prone to late 
blight and this is a blight resistant variety.
By chitting them or sprouting them 
like this they’ll be well ahead
for when I get them planted later on this month.
If you haven’t ordered your seed potatoes yet 
get on and do that pronto before stocks run out.
Sunshine on a rainy day…
Do you know what?
I’m feeling so positive about this time of year.
The birds are singing, the days 
are brighter and life’s good
and what better way to 
celebrate the arrival of spring
than by sowing the happiest 
cheeriest flower I know,
the poached egg plant
and I like them served Sunny Side Up.
Poached egg plants readily self 
seed once they get established.
In fact you can see the seedlings 
here from last year’s flowers,
they kind of act like a green living mulch 
beneath taller plants like beans and broccoli.
And in milder areas they will 
stay green throughout the winter.
These are fantastic little flowers.
I want more poached egg 
plants dotted here and there
throughout the vegetable garden
so let’s get on and sow some more.
Now the first job is to scrape back some 
of this mulch so I can get at the soil
and then I’m just going to lightly 
fork it over to fluff it up
ready to receive those seeds.
There’s really not much to sowing these,
just taking a pinch of seeds and scattering 
them liberally over the surface like that
and then I’m just going to 
tickle them in with the fork.
The soil’s really quite moist here already 
so I won’t need to water them just yet.
Now poached egg plants really 
are a mecca for insects
and I’m talking the really good guys.
Once these start flowering they will be 
attracting all sorts of beneficial bugs
that will help to pollinate 
your crops and devour the pests.
Wonderful stuff!
These won’t need much more attention now
other than perhaps watering in 
dry weather as they establish.
And if they come up a bit crowded 
I’ll thin some of them out.
Sowing directly into the soil like this,
accompanied by beautiful bird song,
it just instills a real sense 
of optimism, just wonderful.
I’ll catch you next time.