I thinned out some of the lettuce and brassica seedlings that I sowed a few weeks back today. The lettuces haven’t done very well in terms of germination. I’m wondering if slugs/snails might be to blame. I found a snail on the frame of the greenhouse close to the module trays containing lettuces, so evicted it. I’ll sow some more tomorrow.
Planning is quite an important part of growing vegetables using the “sow in modules & plant out later” method and it’s one I still haven’t entirely got the hang of. Throughout the main part of the growing year it’s not too bad, but now, as the first batches of plants go into the ground, it’s a bit more tricky. I want to have space between my different pea varieties, for instance, so hopefully they won’t cross-pollinate, and I need to be able to plant sweetcorn in a block across two beds so that they will cross-pollinate. I’d prefer that all my potatoes and onions are planted in a single group of plants, but they’ll each take up most of a bed and I still have winter brassicas suchs as PSB and swedes occupying space that I often end up wanting to use.
I try to draw a plan up every year and I’m getting slightly better each time, but I think it’s going to be a while yet. If it weren’t for the intention to keep the ground productive all the time it would be easy, but then I’d end up with a lot of space that wasn’t doing anything for six months of the year or more.