Planting the Seeds

To date we've planted giant pumpkins, sunflowers, strawberries, broccoli, radish, foxglove & ox-eye daisy. Yesterday we took a trip to Maghera Garden Centre & bought more seeds -asparagus, globe artichoke, onions, leek, rhubarb, coriander, cress, cauliflower, swede, spring onion, fennel bulb & fennel herb, Brussels sprouts, swede, thyme, borage, mint, rocket, parsley, lettuce (3 varieties), cucumber, parsnip, celery, beetroot, carrots, mustard & french bean. The guy at the till said he'd never sold so many at one time. Some of the dates are for 2010 so if we don't get them all planted they'll keep for again. We bought as many organic as we could but the selection is pretty poor. The poly tunnel is supposed to arrive on Friday so we're going to plant as many seeds as we can today in preparation. The garden has been rotavated for grass seed so that'll save me lots of digging this year. The mustard is to provide a green manure - recent evidence shows that it cleans the ground of some bacteria as well as providing nutrients. Plan to do crop rotation - leaving one section each year with just mustard. Haven't time at the moment to read up on all the dos & don'ts so we'll be experimenting. Even if 1/2 the veg grow successfully it'll be worth it. We've got trays with 60 tiny pots so those veg which need to be grown in succession to avoid a glut will be sown at weekly/2weekly intervals.