I am very relieved to be able to put this photograph on the blog today, of germinated broad beans, ready for planting out on the allotment very shortly.
This is probably as good a time as any to own up to the fact that not all of my experiments in eco-friendly (aka "cheapskate") gardening are guaranteed to end well. You should, for example, probably use proper tree ties to hold your fruit trees to their stakes, not laddered stockings. Unless you fancy playing "Russian Roulette" with your seedlings and damping-off disease, do not try to re-use seed compost two or three times in succession just because "it's a bit pricy". The seed you will waste is probably pricer. I've been lucky so far this year, which will only encourage my bad habits. Definitely do not re-use the string with which you tied your tomato plants to their canes; that isn't economising, it's an illness.
In short, this is not the blog of a gardening expert. I am no Jedi Master, merely an apprentice. And one who's trying to make a light sabre out of a fluorescent lighting tube at that.
In particular, I never have a day's luck with carrots. I like carrots a lot, raw or cooked (but not grated for some reason probably connected with school salads). I have tried to grow them both here in North Staffordshire and in Southampton for many years, but with no success whatsoever.
I still persist, though increasingly it feels less like sowing carrot seed and more like making some kind of pagan spring sacrifice to the capricious gods of horticulture. Personally, I wish I could persuade them to accept something else instead - a Wicker Slug, perhaps - but it always seems to be the carrots that the gods claim as their own. Especially if I've got a packet of unusual or expensive seed, like 'Purple Haze'.
My carrots succumb to a variety of sad fates. Some simply fail to germinate because it unexpectedly turns chilly or very wet immediately after the seed goes in. Others have been killed with kindness. Scorched to death by unforecast sunshine blazing down through the cloches set out to protect them from the predicted cold or wet. Trapped beneath the surface crust of the seed bed which was prepared so carefully for them that it got totally overworked and became a tomb. Pests take their toll too. Little grassy carrot seedlings are swiftly annihilated by slugs and snails. One day you have a row of carrots just showing through, the next there is no evidence that they ever existed.
In the garden, and to a lesser extent on the allotment, it is also true that cats in search of somewhere to defecate like nothing so much as the fine sandy tilth of a carrot bed. Not pleasant to clean up, and a disaster for germinating seedlings. Sorry people, I am no fan of felines.
Most notoriously, there is carrot root fly. I have tried 'companion planting' with spring onions and/or garlic without success. The carrot root fly hereabouts are not so easily deceived. Last year I spent quite a lot (by my standards) on some fleece cloches to cover the rows of carrots on the allotment, thinking this would keep them root fly free. For a few weeks they simply provided a cover under which slugs could go about their nefarious business unseen, picking off the carrot fly resistent cultivars first. The cloches then got torn apart by the wind and the carrot root fly were straight in; the few roots which survived the slugs were riddled with their burrowings and unusable.
So, as the Spring Equinox approaches, it must be carrot-sowing time again. After all, it won't do to offend the gods...
