Some Spring Sowing

We spent a lovely afternoon in the greenhouse eagerly sowing seeds; as usual I have probably planted far too many but I get a bit overwhelmed by the choice. Poppet was my trusty helper as usual. She loves having her own little bench down at her level where she can potter about planting seeds and watering them like mummy.

I have tried very hard this year to not spend lots of money on seeds so have been using surplus from last year, along with a Funky Veg Kit I got for Christmas from my sister, and some freebies we got as well.

Poppet chose what seeds to sow first and chose Purple Haze carrots. She was quite excited by the prospect of purple carrots. These will be ready to harvest mid August and should be interesting! Together we filled up the seed tray with compost - Poppet has her own little trowel that she loves using. Then we wrote a plant label - I wrote on one side and Poppet carefully scribbled on the other. On later plant labels if she ever found one with a blank side she would exclaim "you missed one!" and add some scribbles to it.

Carrot seeds are really little so quite hard for little ones to sow; Poppet's ended up all in one side of the tray so I spread them around a little bit for her. Then she 'put them to bed' by covering them with a light layer of compost. Finally we watered them, although we should have really done that first as Poppet's overzealous watering means the seeds got washed around the tray a bit.

We planted tomato seeds, which we got free from Heinz Ketchup - they are the San Marzano variety which I can't wait to try because they are the ones I really like from Marks and Spencers. Plus I love a freebie. We also planted Tigerella tomato seeds that were in my Funky Veg Kit and produce striped tomatoes. We used a sheet of perspex that we found as well as some old tomato and grape punnets as mini propagators for the tomato seeds.

Poppet planted some more pea seeds by herself, they are much better for little fingers to plant. First she makes a little hole with her finger and then pops a seed in. A couple of holes were left seedless so I had to point them out to her. We planted some peas last autumn that will be ready early in the summer but these will be ready a bit after that ensuring we have a continued supply of fresh peas! We only use them for snacking; Poppet loves eating peas like sweets straight from a peapod, Little has yet to experience it but she is not one to turn down food.

We also planted Little Gem lettuce, French radishes, Swiss Chard 'Brightlights', Chantanay carrots, red brussel sprouts, Mazur lettuce, yellow courgettes, coriander, parsley and a singly solitary jalapeno chilli pepper seed (for daddy). Poppet was very interested to see what the seeds looked like and especially liked the big courgette seeds. 

We have even had our first harvest of the year from the garden - our purple sprouting broccoli was finally ready to be picked from Poppet's garden. She was very proud of it and rightly so although the fact that it turned green after cooking disappointed her a bit!

Poppet: 3yrs 3mos

Little: 18 mos