- Musselburgh Leeks (recommended sow: Feb – Apr)
- Bedfordshire Champion Onions (recommended sow: Jan – Apr)
After germinating in egg cartons, these were transferred to our first attempt at a cold frame (thanks to Ben – see his earlier post on this here).
In the first photo (4 weeks after planting outside) they are about 2-3 inches high and some still have the seed shell attached to the top (I’m not sure whether it is meant to stay there but it fell off later anyway).
A lesson I learnt as this stage was to label the plants! Onions and leeks look pretty similar so it was difficult to tell which is which at this stage – we shall have to see how they get on later! (although Ben swears he can pick out Mr.Onion!)
I’ve found the plants only need watering every 3-4 days – which is great when I have a habit of forgetting/not having or making enough time! …
They doubled in size by 6 weeks and needed extra support from some handy toothpicks. Cleaning the glass top beforehand probably would have improved the quality of the photo! but you might be able to see we had a little issue with surface mould; the soil has a green tinge to the top…We have not yet resolved this mystery so any suggestions would be welcomed warmly! We have pondered a few reasons:
- I was watering using collected rainwater in a tin watering can so there may have been some problem with pH levels or left-over schmeg in the can??
- They are planted in a black big liner inside a plastic box so there might not have been enough air circulation or too much moisture??
- Or maybe just some good ole natural mould/algae??
Since the plants grew much bigger after that point, they were transferred to cold frames but it would be great to hear if anyone has had this sort of problem before or has any solutions. It didn’t seem to affect the plants in any major way – they grew quite healthy the rest of the way.
Check out the end results or see what else I planted…
Vicky x
The Grass Is Greener 