SEEDS I'M SOWING IN FEBRUARY 2024 / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

good morning guys welcome back to my allotment Diaries and in this video I'm going to be sharing all the seeds I'm going to be sewing for my allotment Garden in the month of February hi my name's Emma and a few years ago I got my first allotment plot these videos are my allotment Diaries and I would love for you to subscribe to my channel so first of all I have to say don't get too far ahead of yourself as you can see behind me the garden is very bare and Bleak at the moment and that is actually on purpose I don't tend to sew most of the things that go in the garden until March April time um some of the things don't even get sewn till May and June that's just because the soil is not warm enough yet the days are not light enough and there's not enough light and we still have a risk of frost so most things get sewn later on but there are a few things that I sew in the month of February either because they need a really long growing period or because I've just found they work outside so we'll get straight into it one crop that needs a really long growing period is chilies and peppers and I have three varieties here that I'm going to be sewing this year these two here are from a company called ccraft which send me a box of seeds every single month this a subscription service and they send you the seeds that can be sewn that month and it's a really great way if you are a beginner and I have to put a disclaimer here that I am sent a free seed books every month to try out I do have a discount code below so you can go into the description and you can get some lovely seeds sent to you every month it's a little bit easier than having to think about what to grow every month and if you're if you don't have the time to do that then it's a great it's a great time saer basically Bally chilies and peppers need a really long growing time they don't like to be planted outside at this time of year because it is too cold they are warm loving plants but you need to start them now so the three varieties I'm growing are the spiralis sweet pepper which looks absolutely incredible my neighbor grows these and says that she gets an absolute abundance of these every year so these are going to be started inside in a seed tray along with the chili pepper hot lemon and the sweet pepper pepper golden Californian Wonder these seeds are really small so what I'm going to do is get a seed tray and just scatter some in and then pinch them out when I'm going to pot them on and then they won't go outside probably until May June time when it's definitely warmed up another crop that I love to start in February is my tomatoes tomatoes need a really long growing time now you can just buy tomato plants and some years I do do this I don't always start them from seed they are actually quite E easy to start from seed though that's the thing the seeds are very tiny yes but don't be fooled they are actually great at growing they're great little Growers and I've never really had a problem potting them on um I've never managed to kill them basically so if you're looking for an unkillable seed to start and then pot on I would go for tomatoes tomatoes are survivors I had three varieties here and one that I haven't brought yet so the three varieties I'm going to grow this year here are crini tomato F1 and this is a late blight resistant crop tomatoes are notorious for getting blight so anything that says blight resistant I'm very happy with particularly late blight late blight is the one that comes later on in the year and absolutely wipes out your crops and you just have to pull them up and burn them um early blight you can sometimes deter and get rid of so it's the late one that's the problem I'm also going to grow the Tomato Roma VF so these are great big Plum like tomatoes really delicious I have grown these before and they've worked really really well and from seed craft I have been given the Tomato Black Moon never tried these before but I'm very excited to try these the variety that I don't have here is my absolute fundamental Gardener's Delight if you have never grown tomatoes before grow Gardener's Delight it grows in absolute abundance it's so easy to grow so easy to look after I get tons and tons of tomatoes from that so Gardener Delight you can always buy them as well as plants like I said if you go to a local Garden Center probably around April May time they will have tons and tons of little tomato plants and most likely they are Gardener Delight because it's just the easiest one to grow absolutely delicious super easy go for Gardener Delight if you're if you're a first time tomato grower right so here's my tray for tomatoes I'm going to sew all three of my varieties into this one tray got some really nice fine compost in here so these are the roma tomato seeds you see how teeny teeny tiny they are but have faith in them will work I'm just going to do a couple in a row just along there just a few in a little row I'm not going to cover them up yet cuz I'm going to sew my other ones as well so this is the crini cini ones it's always better to put your seeds into your hand before you put it into anything else cuz you can control it a bit better there not many here so should be okay just drop those in a little row finally we're going to do the Tomato Black Moon again pour it into your hand I'm just going to add a label in so that I know exactly where they are and then we'll just cover them over a little bit of fine compost just so the seeds are covered and then I'll just press it down a little bit and this is just to make sure the seeds get good contact with the compost seeds need to have contact with compost to grow so just press them down a little bit get them a water and pop them on a sunny window sill and that is my three tomato variety sewn there are a few herbs that you can start at this time of year but only indoors don't put any herb seeds Outdoors at this time it will not survive three herbs that I'm going to grow from seed this year indoors in February are basil chives parsley and I actually have four I've got one more oregano so these are all seeds that can be started inside now in a seed tray and they will need pricking out putting into a pot um and then putting outside when it it's much much warmer and it's much sunnier if you don't fancy sew in herbs and seeds buy them as little plug plants from a gardening center um later on in the year they're usually only a couple of pounds and you'll get an absolute abundance of herbs you'll get herbs all summer from them so you don't always have to sew from seed and I'm a big advocate for just buying some plug plants or particularly for sewing directly I I live in a really small Terrace house and I don't always have the room to sew everything from a seed and I don't have a greenhouse so if you're like me just wait later on in the year and you can SE them directly however having said that there are a couple of plants that I always sew directly at this time of year leaks and these are from CR cross these are the blue blue s I will be sewing something a little bit controversial but if you watch this channel on a regular basis you'll know how successful my pnps are I'm going to be seing my parsnips at the end of February directly Outdoors these are the Gladiator F1 they're my favorite parsnips to grow you do get some really big Whoppers from it and but they're also really really tasty delicious very sweet if you harvest them after the frost I'm a massive believer in sewing your parsnips and you know what I don't even cover them with fleece now I literally just make a drill in the soil put in some parets cover them over water them look after them and they grow they just grow and they grow so well one of the reasons that I do it this time of year is because the Slugs and snails aren't out in full force yet and so I find that I get a lot less slug damage when I plant them in February but they just grow and they're just a great thing to whack in the ground let me know if you saw some pnps this February and let me know if they survive I'm telling you I'm telling you they will survive a few salad crops that you can se but you will need to cover with a CL or one of those big what they call those little plastic glass things that you can put over the top you could there's some lettuces that you can sew just check the back of the seeds to make sure that you can sew them from February a lot of them say March but I'd say towards the end of Fe is probably okay so this is the red salad bowl I have grown this a few times I've got some seeds left um and this is fantastic you can actually Harvest this within 10 to 12 weeks from planting it which is great for really really early harvest in the year um obviously radishes can go in now um radishes can go in at any time and usually they do okay I would cover them in CL just in case we get a frost um I don't know how they're doing the frost I have a feeling they might suffer a little bit so I would probably just clush them but radishes are a great shout for whacking in the ground anytime soon these are the sparklers sparkler 3 also I I imagine you could probably whack in the salad onions now onions can be sewn from seed I always tend to do my onions and my garlics from bulbs or cloves whatever you want to call it onion bulbs um just because it's easier but I'm not doing it this year because I've got that pesky onion bug thing which is just oh no the white rot that's what I've got got white rot and I'm not supposed to plant any onions or garlic on my plot for a couple of years now so do look out for diseases like that and just ster clearer things if you do get them so let's sew that lovely radish and lettuce that I have selected I'm going to put them straight outside into this vegetable planter which is been topped up with fresh compost um about a month ago I would say so I'm going to start with the lettuce and I'm just going to make a drill in the soil and a drill is a fancy name for a line we summon lines for a few reasons firstly because it's obvious to see what's coming up so you know if it's coming up in a nice row then it's most likely what you've actually sewn and if it's not in the row it it's probably a weed because weeds and new plants tend to look the same it's also just much easier to weed around the rose and also to harvest so you can see these lettuce seeds are really really tiny a great tip is to pour the seeds out onto your hand and then pinch them and just scatter them as lightly as you can we want to cry we want to try to sew really thinly but we can thin them out later if we do it too thickly which we're very likely to because let's be honest it's not easy to sew thinly I'm giving it a good pack down because we need the soil to make really good contact with the seeds and that just helps it to grow next to that I'm going to pop in my radish seeds so my radishes are the bright lights variety one of my favorite varieties of radish to grow it should come up within about 10 weeks I would say in about 8 to 10 weeks they should be ready to harvest the seeds are much bigger for radishes and I absolutely love sewing them they are really good fun so again I am pouring them into my hand and then taking a little pinch and scattering them down the road and then I'm just going to cover in my drill with some more soil and give it a really good pat down again to ensure there's really good contact with the soil and the seed and I'll just leave those uncovered and see how they do come and check back on my channel in a few weeks time and I'll let you know how they're doing there are a few other things that you can do in your garden right now to warm up the soil and get it ready for Springtime planting most of the things that I like to Ser my lot Min is directly so this is really really good to do is to warm up your soil I like to put like cardboard down over some of the beds I like to put some ground sheet over it and I like to mulch really thickly with nice big thick bags of compost add all the nutrients and minerals in and then the layers tend to warm up the bed I've always used cardboard on My beds and it is a little bit controversial I always get comments about the ink in cardboards and so this year I did do a lot of research black ink is generally deemed as safer for your soil than colored ink in colored ink they can use some metals which can contaminate your soil but the research that I've done say that the contamination is very very minimal so it's not something that I particularly worry about if you do worry about it check what kind of ink it is so if it's a soy base or a vegetable base then it's going to be really safe for your garden um and that's just something you can do to ensure ensure that you're not contaminating the soil but personally I find cardboard such an amazing material firstly I have so much of it all the time it makes a great insulator for your for your bed heads it retains water and it represses all the weeds and I just find it so easy to use at my lot plot and it's usually like it's free it's just like free mulch so I use it all the time but I'd love to hear your thoughts on cardboard at an allotment plot and that is what I am sewing this February for my alotment garden obviously it's not everything that you can sew and there are some fantastic resources on the internet that you can look up if you Google what to sew in February there'll be a much longer list but this is what I'm SE specifically for my allotment plot like I said before I like to do most of my sewing later on in the year when I can do it directly I just don't have the space in my house to sew thousands of seeds and keep them all safe I hope you enjoyed this video if you did do subscribe to my channel and I will be back again next week thank you so much for watching guys bye