Today I have transplanted my coriander, land cress, red chard and chervil into mushroom trays.
The remaining plants I put into what is going to be the “winter salad bed” in the polytunnel. I don’t think they’ll survive a hard frost in there if we have one and I may have to rethink how I’m going to distribute the rest of the plants that I want to go in it, but this is an experiment so for now they can just stay there and see how they get on.
Whilst I’m happy to have got this done, it wasn’t really the main plan for this weekend. I have twenty-one module trays (about 250 individual modules) of onions that need planting out, as well as a couple of trays each of spinach and corn salad and there’s still the garlic to plant. The garlic is hardly in the way, but the rest of it needs to be transplanted to make space for the remainder of my winter salads. The weather this weekend has been abominable however. Not only has it rained almost continuously, but we’ve also had strong winds. Had it only been rain I’d probably just have pegged out our old gazebo over the veggie beds so I could work without getting completely soaked. Still, next weekend looks somewhat better at the moment, so perhaps I can get it done then.
Before leaving the greenhouse I also thinned out the mustard and leaf radish seedlings. They’re looking a bit leggy, but I guess that’s only to be expected given the weather.
I’ve decided I’m really not happy with the module trays I’m using. It’s quite awkward to get the plants out (especially if the roots have grown through the drain holes in the base of each cell) without damaging either the plants or the tray. If the tray gets damaged it effectively becomes single use plastic and I’m not having that. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anything better yet. I could attempt to cut a much bigger hole in the base of the cells to allow me to push the entire plug of compost out with a finger and see how that goes, but I’m also wondering if I could make my own modules in the kinds of numbers I’m likely to want that would do a better job. I’ve seen people use newspaper wrapped around a former, but I’m not convinced about the efficiency of that when I had something like 400 to 500 modules occupied at the start of this weekend and might well want more as we go into spring. Perhaps 3d-print something? Making my own might at least have the advantage of allowing me to remove the little nooks and crannies that slugs and snails find to hide in.