February is still deep mid-winter here in the Yorkshire Dales. Overwintering vegetables in the polytunnel are fairly static at this time of year. However now that January is out of the way I can start to think about starting vegetables for maincropping this coming season. This involves the use of my heated propagator.
The first seeds into the propagator are Musselburgh leeks. I put them in deep pots or yoghurt cartons so that there is plenty of room for the roots to develop. No more than approx 25 seeds per pot. The seeds will germinate in 3-4 days and will be peeping through after a week. At that point I take them out of the propagator and put them on a windowsill at approx 16oC. In 3 or 4 weeks the pots can go out into the unheated greenhouse.
Next up are the onion sets. I normally use Sturon as my main crop. They tend to make good sized onions and store very well. This year I have also started Stuttgart sets so I wiil be able to compare the 2 ( providing that I remember which is which)
I purchased both types at Twin Locks Garden Centre, Gargrave. The come in bags of approx 50 at £1 per bag. They have been potted into individual plantpots in the cold greenhouse using general purpose compost.
Each set is then covered with compost. Once the sets have started to grow they will be transferred to the polytunnel on the allotment ( probably in 2-3 weeks) and then hardened off for planting out in mid-March. Last year, once they were planted out, they were attacked by rabbits which ate the new growth. Once the onions were protected by a mesh fence they grew back and went on to be an excellent crop (for which I give the rabbits no credit.)
