Chitting Time, Seed Ordering, More Books

The greenhouses are sorted but the potting shed needs more tidying. But the potatoes need to get put out for chitting so I started by clearing the end benching. Setting the potatoes out to chit always marks the start of the season for me. Just the rest of the shed to sort now!

Chitting Potatoes

Chitting Potatoes in the potting shed 2022

Comparing the photo of the chitting potatoes this year and last, I don’t seem to have cut back as I intended! That photo and what I ordered is listed here: Ordering Seed Potatoes for 2022

Seed Ordering

I went through my my sweet tins and old plastic ice cream carton where I keep my seeds. Oh dear, how did I get so many? There’s no point in buying seeds I already have. It seems an obvious thing to say but I’ve done it before.

Some of them are unlikely to have an acceptable germination level, being well out of date and opened packets. See How Long Seeds Will Keep For These went into one pile. Now I could just bin them but I hate waste. The plan is to just thickly sow them in some seed trays and use what does show as microgreens.

I’ve actually got about 10 packets of Hispi cabbages left from our free seeds offer. These had a sow by of 2018 and last year the germination was very poor. Plan is to sow about 2 or 3 packets per half seed tray. If the seedlings look OK, then I’ll prick out and pot some up to plant out later.

Microgreens – chicken feed!

Unfortunately we don’t really like microgreens. I know they’re the latest trendy food and all that but they’ve no more appeal to me than mustard and cress we had on egg sandwiches. However, the chickens love them. So I’ll give the ladies a treat that they’ll helpfully convert into eggs and manure. Not so much eggs with the pensioner hens but they can have a happy retirement.

Out of Date Seeds

Then I listed the remaining seeds. Some are past their official sow-by date but I’ll just sow a few extra to compensate for lower germination rates.

What to order?

Happily I didn’t need to order much at all this year. The past couple of years I’ve over-ordered as the supply situation was tricky at points. My big worry was that we would have major supply problems with the Covid situation. These haven’t materialised but there could still be problems coming down the line. Hopefully not, but something to keep an eye on.

We’re certainly seeing price increases in food as well as energy and most everything else it seems. That will encourage people to take up and continue growing their own.

Dig for Victory Book Cover

Dig for Victory Book

Books

It’s just 15 months since my Dig for Victory book arrived from the printer. We were a little worried that we’d ordered too many originally, but we’ve nearly sold out that first print run.  So a second print run was duly ordered.

On Thursday the delivery arrived from the printer in Malta. That was an ‘all hands on deck’ situation and our neighbours popped down to help. Actually was a ton of books!

I’m hoping we’ll start to get more trade sales now the pandemic seems to be ending. Bookshops and exhibition centres have been very reticent to buy stock when they’ve been coping with being closed and tough restrictions when they did manage to open. Fingers crossed they’ll feel more confident now.

Posted in Allotment Garden Diary
One comment on “Chitting Time, Seed Ordering, More Books
  1. Barry spedding says:

    Hi john, Im doing axona this year to would it be to cold in the greenhouse for chitting them

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