Have you ever been tempted to sow seeds the minute February's frost begins to thaw, only to end up with a garden of spindly plants? In our latest gardening episode, I'll guide you through the dos and don'ts of February sowing, ensuring you sow at the ideal time for robust seedling growth. We're embracing the subtle lengthening days, a signal for gardeners to prepare their soil, but with a mindful approach to avoid premature sowing.
As we gingerly step into early-season planting, I'll walk you through my very own planting playbook. What seeds to start in sowing in February. The February seed sowing list has many of the basics on them onions, spring onions cabbage etc. We're not overlooking the spicy kick of peppers and chilies, either; I'll reveal why starting them early is essential. You can download the full February sowing guide here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DjzqEmxNfPQ3pBu78H4xNFcrhqBNx7iK/view?usp=sharing Whether you're nurturing tender winter salads or eagerly anticipating the first radish crunch, this episode is brimming with practical wisdom to help your garden flourish amid the chilly tail-end of winter. So, put on your gardening gloves and let's plant some seeds of knowledge together!
Courses: I mentioned I have two great options for grow your own food course.
Option 1: Grow your own food online course, this is a self paced course with over 4.5 hours of tutorial videos taking your through each step of growing your own food from sowing your first seed to harvest and everything in between. Including monthly sowing guides and additional modules to be added throughout the year. This course is available for €97 and is available for the lifetime of the course.
Option 2: All the goodness of the above course with the added benefit of monthly live group calls from March through to the end of June (dates TBC but replays available) These calls will answers community questions, plan the month ahead, troubleshoot any sticking points you have and of course support as you master growing your own food. This option closes at the end of February and the People inside will get great support over the coming months.
Have you ever been tempted to sow seeds the minute February's frost begins to thaw, only to end up with a garden of spindly plants? In our latest gardening episode, I'll guide you through the dos and don'ts of February sowing, ensuring you sow at the ideal time for robust seedling growth. We're embracing the subtle lengthening days, a signal for gardeners to prepare their soil, but with a mindful approach to avoid premature sowing.
As we gingerly step into early-season planting, I'll walk you through my very own planting playbook. What seeds to start in sowing in February. The February seed sowing list has many of the basics on them onions, spring onions cabbage etc. We're not overlooking the spicy kick of peppers and chilies, either; I'll reveal why starting them early is essential. You can download the full February sowing guide here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DjzqEmxNfPQ3pBu78H4xNFcrhqBNx7iK/view?usp=sharing Whether you're nurturing tender winter salads or eagerly anticipating the first radish crunch, this episode is brimming with practical wisdom to help your garden flourish amid the chilly tail-end of winter. So, put on your gardening gloves and let's plant some seeds of knowledge together!
Courses: I mentioned I have two great options for grow your own food course.
Option 1: Grow your own food online course, this is a self paced course with over 4.5 hours of tutorial videos taking your through each step of growing your own food from sowing your first seed to harvest and everything in between. Including monthly sowing guides and additional modules to be added throughout the year. This course is available for €97 and is available for the lifetime of the course.
Option 2: All the goodness of the above course with the added benefit of monthly live group calls from March through to the end of June (dates TBC but replays available) These calls will answers community questions, plan the month ahead, troubleshoot any sticking points you have and of course support as you master growing your own food. This option closes at the end of February and the People inside will get great support over the coming months.
I was going everybody and welcome to episode 212 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode, we're getting back to the sewing guides. So last year this proved to be one of the most popular types of episode where at the start of the month we gave a sort of an overview of what you can sew in the vegetable garden in the coming month, and a lot of people emailed and messaged saying it was great to get that kind of a prompt at the start of the month to, I suppose, keep them on track in terms of what should and could be sewn in that month. And I suppose that is one of the biggest things that we fall down on. And your February is now the month where we can get going. I know you will have seen, and you always do see people itching to get started and some sewing seeds in January and posting pictures of seedlings, and I've always I always say that you have to definitely be very, very cautious at this time of the year. For me personally, st Valentine's Day or 14th of February, that's when I will start sewing and I don't really sew anything before that and I don't find that there's any huge benefit in it. And even take this week we've had really cold temperatures, sleet and snow and the biggest challenge is, okay, germination. You need a certain temperature for germination of all of these and it varies from vegetable to vegetable what temperature is actually required. But the biggest challenge is that I suppose the light levels are just so low. But from the start of February to the end of February there is a huge difference. But in the sunrise, you know, we get about the subtle rise about an hour earlier between the at the end of the month, then it will at the start of the month and in terms of, you know, sunset that will be about an hour later than it will have been at the start of February. So that's why I say the middle of the month. Once you get to the middle of the month, that's really when you can kick off, because you're getting to light levels that are, you know, good enough for germinating and so on.
Speaker 1:
Seed, and that's what you want, because otherwise you'll end up with leaky seedlings. So proceed with caution is, I suppose, the message at this stage of the year. Again, look in the head so say you get these seedlings in and you're looking ahead sort of six weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks when these are going to be planted out somewhere. Potentially at that stage you could and and sometimes are in quite wet and cold weather at that stage, and you know that's what you need to view as well, because if you get good warm weather through March, seedlings or seeds that you sow at that stage will catch right back up on ones that you've sowed earlier that are just sitting and struggling. So just be careful. I'm not saying don't start, but proceed with caution at this stage. Here that's the big thing. And the other caveat again to find out is that there can be variances within the country. So, for example, here where I am in County Leash, it's definitely going to be, you know, a lot colder.
Speaker 1:
My seed sowing will start a bit later than, say, somebody down in the south west of the country whose you know whose last frost date might be maybe a month ahead of what the last frost date here typically is. So they're just all considerations and important to know your area. Once you get used to that and if you're new to it, you'll take notes and remember then for next year what you saw on a certain date and lean on the experience of others. If there's other people growing in your area, lean on their experience the seeds that you can sow at this stage. So if you have a greenhouse, there's some seeds that you're going to be able to sow directly into the ground in the greenhouse at this stage of the year, but that'll be, as I say, from mid to the end of the month. Then there's some that you will be sown in module trays. In fact, the majority of what I'll be sown at this stage will be in module trays, even seeds that later on in the year I would sow directly into the ground. At this stage I might get them started in a propagation area within the tunnel in this month. So for the first time I'd sown them in a module tray and then later it could be direct into the ground.
Speaker 1:
Just in terms of my tunnel, I actually did. I mentioned before that my tunnel has open sides, so it's quite cold. I was using I have a nice propagation bench and I was just using propagation plastic, which is a really clear, very light plastic that I had hooped over the bed. The challenge with that was that when you got a windy day that was a little bit under the colder side, it was actually the wind was passing through the house and it was sucking the air, sort of blown cold air or sucking cold air across that propagation bench. So it tended to be that things. I wouldn't say they struggled, but I certainly wasn't getting the benefit of having them inside as much as I should have been.
Speaker 1:
So I've created a sort of a fully enclosed propagation propagation box for want of a better word which basically has solid sides, plastic. It's about 14 inches tall, with a cover on it. That will mean that when that wind blows it's not going to be sucking the air, the cold air, across the young seedlings, and I should be able to kind of keep a little bit more warmth in there. And then the rest of the bed is as it was and I'll be able to sort of harden off seedlings as they come along that bench. So initially they'll go in, particularly the stuff that's going to want to be the heat. I have a heated propagator in there that likes the tomatoes and chili peppers and so on. When it comes to so on them, they'll initially be on the heated propagator, then they'll stay within the sort of hot box for a little while and then they'll transition on later on into the, I suppose, the hardening off area, I guess. And yeah, that should make my life a lot easier.
Speaker 1:
But at this stage of the year again, if you don't have a greenhouse, you could potentially be putting these in your window sill and if that is the case, I would be just take your time, because very soon those window sills will get filled up and somebody could run you out of the house because there'll be no space left on the window sill. So just proceed with caution at this stage of the year. So what can you get? So on, nowadays would be the usual ones and there are going to be regular ones that will be on pretty much every so on list. I'm not going to go through them all comprehensively and I'll tell you why shortly towards the end of the episode, so I just got a touch on the main ones. So spring onions is one that you can get. So on early Onions, standard onions are one that you can get so on early and again, I planted some onions from autumn onion sets. They're coming up in the tunnel and outside, but I really am getting the most success from seed seed. So on onions, definitely they're bolting less, they're storing a little bit better. So for me, for the majority of my onions, I'm going to be using, so on, so on, onions. So that'll be one of the first ones I'll be doing.
Speaker 1:
Cabbage, then an early variety, so for me it's going to be, you know, one of the pointed ones, probably greyhound, and that's going to give me an early, an early cabbage, sort of late spring. Calabrese, again an early variety. Cauliflower, again an early variety, and all of those are in module trays and that's one seed per cell. That's typically for me. I'm only going to do what I've done showing you previously or spoke about previously. I'm only going to do three cauliflower, three calabrese, three cabbage in the same tray and then continue so on, licking enough on those. Spinach, that's one. I'm going to go probably direct into the ground. I might do one sewing just in module trays initially, but I'll probably go direct into the ground at some stage in late February, early March. Then leeks, again an early variety, that will be multi-sewn into module trays, probably two to four seeds per cell.
Speaker 1:
Broad beans, which I haven't sown I know a lot of people and people say the best time to sow those is in the autumn. I haven't done that, so I'm going to do them in a deep pot and I've got to do one seed per pot, basically, and get them going soon. Radishes. Another one again towards the end of the month, directly into the ground. Towards the end of the month or into early March, directly into the ground in the greenhouse. Turn up the same. So that's your Milan purple top. Again I've got to sow those.
Speaker 1:
Lettuce is one that I will be definitely sowing early and they'll continue to be sowed regularly throughout the season. The one I'll probably sow initially would be a mixed lettuce. I'd still stick with a winter hardy one just at the initial sowing and then switch late in the month or next month to, I suppose, the more spring summer types, beetroot, direct sow into the tunnel late in the month or in early March Again, in any of those ones that you're sown directly into the tunnel. Just if you can heat up the ground a little bit before sowing with a bit of black plastic or something like that, that would be a big help For me. The tunnel, as I say, can be a little bit cold, but if you're in a standard greenhouse, your soil is probably going to warm up quite well quite early. Black plastic on the ground can just help a little bit to heat up the ground slightly. As I say winter salads, I've got to sow those.
Speaker 1:
A couple of different herbs can be sowed at this stage, so, like zuccareander and dill, you can get going with those. I won't be sowing that because I still have plants that I'm harvesting pretty much all winter off in the tunnel. They're going to continue to give harvest for another good few months. I'll do a sowing a chard, but it'll be later in the spring and that sowing then potentially will take me right through the winter and into spring again. It's not one for me that I need to sow. Very often you don't cut the head of the chard, you just take the leaves as required. So three or four plants and you get just a really long time out of it. But if you don't have that and you want it, it's a great vegetable to grow and really work getting sown now.
Speaker 1:
Peppers and chili peppers are Brazilians. They're ones that you should sew as early as possible because they require a really long growing season and while I'm saying that the daylight is increasing at this stage, by the time you're looking to harvest them, potentially daylights can be start dropping. So the earlier you can get them, the better you get To really take advantage of those longer days of July and August and September After that, then if it's not, if those plants haven't matured by August time, you're not going to get the best out of them. So you want to be getting those sewed as early as possible, protecting from frost they don't like frost at all. So protecting from frost as you go along, and then that will you know, that would mean that you're going to have that length of growing season that you really require Tomatoes again.
Speaker 1:
I will sew, probably maybe not the 14th or thereabouts, probably the following week. So, like the third week of February, I'll sew those. I'm just going to sew. I typically just sew into a seed tray of 15, 20 plants. I ended up with 40 last year and probably the year before always, always end up with too many, so won't grow as many this year, or at least that's what I'm saying today.
Speaker 1:
But the idea is that I'd sew them into a seed tray, prick them out into pots in probably a month's time and then possibly move them twice into, you know, two bigger pots so that they're ready to hit the ground whenever sort of the last frost has passed, which for me here will be quite late, probably a lot later than a lot of you listening. So you know that's just again, to go back to what we said earlier about knowing your area, and that's sort of the list of what you can be sown. You know it's not a full list yet because there's certain things that we just don't want to touch, some of the warmer stuff that we won't touch until next month and at that stage then it'll start. You're really ramping up. March will be a much bigger list, much more comprehensive list, but February is a very good month to start Again, just to heart, back to it, just proceed with caution and know your own area and for me, as I say, middle of the month, that's when I'll start sowing. So that gives you a good idea, because I know everyone at this stage of the year is itching to get started, but it has been so wet, and this week particularly has been really cold, that it just doesn't.
Speaker 1:
You know there's no great appetite and I've said it before, the real, true sign of when you should get sown seed is when you feel nature waking up. And when you feel nature waking up, that's when you know it's a good time to, it's a good time to get going. I suppose it still feels wintry, to be honest. But when you, when you are out on a day and there's a little bit of warmth in the sun, you have a little bit of bright sunshine, the day is a little bit brighter, less cloudy. You'll know by the plants in your garden, the buds on the trees, your things will be starting to wake up and that's your indication that, yeah, it feels right.
Speaker 1:
And, as I said, that could be different for everybody. You could already have that going on in certain parts of the country or in other countries where you're listening, but for me here, I just it feels wintery here still. So that's why there's no panic. There's no panic from that point of view. There are jobs that you can be doing in February. There's still a great time to create no-dig beds and it's still there's still lots of time to do that. You can do that for the next couple of months and you'll still have great success with those.
Speaker 1:
A lot of bare root trees, fruit trees, fruit bushes you can still create your fruit gardens at this stage of the year Strawberry plants again bare root they can be all got at this time of the year and seed potatoes. While on the one hand, I've said already, the ground is wet, it's still very cold, but definitely you can be getting your seed potatoes lined up, getting the ones that you want to cheat. I don't, I do cheat, but I think a much bigger factor in the potatoes growing strongly and successfully is the ground temperature. So just keep your ground temperature in mind way ahead of cheating. Chitting is an extra benefit, but if the ground temperatures are not right when those potatoes go in, they're just going to do nothing anyway. So ground temperature is reasonably good and again, you can use something like black plastic to get a little bit of temperature into the ground. Protect them if any frosts come out. Them up as they start growing and protect them, especially those early shoots, protect them from the cold. So they're kind of the jobs and the list that we can be can be so on in February. I know, as I say, it serves as a kind of a prompt for people at the start of the month. So we'll continue to do this over the next couple of months.
Speaker 1:
What I said earlier in relation to the list being not a complete or full list, it's pretty good, like there's not much there that you can't sew, but what I've done. I spoke about the online course that I have. So basically, I've changed slightly how that's been done for a couple of reasons. Number one the course that's created is, at the moment, four and a half hours of actual tutorials to take you through a complete growing season, from start to finish. So creating your beds, how to sew, what to sew, when to sew, when to plant out, and go on through the complete season from the start, where you create your beds, to your first harvest and everything in between. On top of that, on a monthly basis, there's a monthly sewing guide, a comprehensive monthly sewing guide being added in February's one is already up there. People on the course are finding great benefit from that, and that course is 97 euro for lifetime access. So I actually had it set up originally as year long access, but I've changed that and it's lifetime access. So once you sign up, you get access to all of this for as long as you want to watch it. And the monthly sewing guides are there. They're downloadable. So at the end of the year you'll have a full year of sewing guides to download. Create your own little booklet, put your notes on them and then tweak it to suit your own area. So that's available.
Speaker 1:
But what I was getting asked was sort of for an extra level of support. So that course, that initial course 97 euro, lifetime access, all the guides, additional modules be added all the time and that's available for 97 euro. If anyone is interested in that, the link is in the show notes or you can visit my website, which is wwwmastermagardencom. But on top of that and this is where people were looking for a bit extra support, and I can kind of understand why, because they have specific questions that relate to their gardens, their growing space, their area, challenges that come up or problems that they need to overcome and they're looking for additional support. So what I'm doing is, right up until the end of February, which is only two weeks away, I'm doing a launch pad so Grow your Own Food Launch Pad, which is basically All access to the course that I just mentioned. So you have full access to that lifetime access to that.
Speaker 1:
But on top of that, from the month of March right through to the end of June, we will do at least once a month we'll do an online Q&A, submit questions beforehand or live on the chat. We go through the challenges that people have, what's working and, to be very, very specific, so if the weather is doing particularly cold. Old true March. We'll be able to chat about that. We'll be able to help people along there, because what people are saying is that the teary element of it is brilliant and the practical element of it is brilliant, but when things change and move because some people are, you know, they're not very experienced at growing their own food. Yet when things change or are different or a challenge arises, they're looking for answers as to how to overcome them and be successful. That's what this launchpad is going to give you.
Speaker 1:
So that's basically the full access to the course, plus a minimum of one but probably two in certain months online group calls with specific Q&As, and that will be 197. That'll take you right through to June, but you still have access to all the video content, lifetime access to that. So that's going to be there and available all the time. So for 197, you have that, or for 97, you have the course that you can just watch at your own pace and download the monthly guides. So links to both of those and the show notes. As I say, I'll still cover on the podcast, the you know the sewing a broad list of what you can sew, but a more comprehensive guide will be available within those courses and, yeah, the feedback so far has been really good. Right up until the end of February, you have a chance to jump onto that launchpad. After that that closes and whoever's in there at that stage will get all the benefit and we'll have, as I say, at least one a month where we come together as a community and we'll figure out the challenges in each and every person's garden. So, if that sounds like something that's for you, as I say, link in the show notes or you can visit the website and you'll see all the details there.
Speaker 1:
And next week's episode is an interesting one. It's a listener's question, which is a little bit unusual, but it's something that I know a lot of gardeners struggle with and it's certainly something that I would have thought about here before. And so, yeah, that's being covered in next week's episode and it will. I think it will be, you know, something useful for a lot of people. And, yeah, that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening.