The Plot

The Plot

Friday 7 February 2014

Running out of Space

 
This was taken this morning and as you can see I've had a fairly good germination of my "Globo" onions (blue) plant label with a near 100% take.  I'm delighted with this as prior to purchasing my variable control propagator I had struggled to get my onions etc to germinate well.  The "Matador" shallot seed (Red) plant label has not germinated as well with only 18 out of 30 cells having a seedling in them just now.  I'm not to concerned about this as it was 2013 seed and I'm only looking for about 15 strong plants to plant out.  There is still time for more seeds to germinate so I'll keep them in the propagator for a wee while longer.
 

As you can see below my grow chamber is now very congested and with my Globo and Matador seedling needing into it shortly I've decided to construct another one either this weekend or during the week.  With that in mind I order another plug in temperature controller like the one on the right of the picture as you look at it.  This is a must for me as it is a thermostat which I use to control my tube heater which is at the bottom of my chamber.  I set it at 12 degrees C and this helps my to at least keep the night time temperature at that level. The heat off the lights does push the day time temp up to closer to 15-18 C depending on how warm it is outside.  I ordered my ET05 plug in thermostat on Tuesday afternoon over e-bay and it was delivered on Thursday morning great service.
 
 
 
If you look closely you will see that I have some siting on top of the onion and blanch leek pots.  This shows how tight for space I am.  These small pots are some "pot leek" plants I received from Neil Drummond our DA Chairman. I have never grown Pot Leeks before and Neil was keen that I tried them as the classes up here are not that well supported. 
 
I had resolved this year to restrict what I grow and try to make a real top job of it, however it is always good to try a new veg.   

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Shallots, Onions & NVS DA meeting


As previously posted the newly formed North of Scotland DA (NoSDA) held its second meeting on Thursday 30th of January.  There was again a splendid turn out with 19 people attending.  John MacKay from Golspie gave and excellent talk slide show of some of the local shows along with pictures from the Nationals at Dundee some years ago. John then gave a talk on growing parsnips.  This was followed with a Q & A session where the members from the floor asked a number of questions of three "wise men" on the platform.  The panel consisted of John MacKay, Stevie Halifax and myself.  I must admit I felt a bit of a fraud sitting with the other two growers given the experience they have.  However I found the whole night thoroughly enjoyable and to cap the evening of we had a raffle and sales table which raised £68.00
 
I also picked up my exhibition onions on Thursday evening.  These had made the long trip North from the Island of Bute, where fellow grower Niall Currie had kindly started them off for me.  These are Kelsae onions from Alistair Gray's strain.  I must say the seem to have travelled well and are now in my grow chamber with lights on for 11 hours which will go up to 12 next week.  
 
 

I'm also delighted to say that my Shallots have finally decided to start putting up some top shoots.  It is over a month since I planted them up. (These also came from Niall)