We are 117 mtrs up and 9 miles inland with not too much to stop bad weathr.
any seeds i sowed direct in the soil les growth medoum failed . starts like cabbage es din't do too well .
Luckily the glashouse hase come into it's own and i've also used the windowcill to get germinations going then harden in the glash house .repot at a bigger size then hold back till they are at least three inches tall and growing well .
none of the four or ficve carrot varietu=ies have done much except fotr a brand called Flyaway and out of nine stations direct sown six have flourished and are now about three inches tall..
all over wintered onion sets have come on well and novenber through to first of march planted garlic had really tanke off the biggest are nearly two feet tall.
We are still cropping PSB and dwarf curly kale . Some glasshouse sown winter letuces have come on well and are nearly 10 inches across . we had tow massive four inch long 1 1./4 thick french breakfast raddishes that were as sweet and crips as yoy could ever imagine .. the rest of the five inch long row failed to arrive.
On going round all my raised beds this afternoon I was dismayed at the failure rate of seeds sown mid April .
I'm now about to start germinating some more carrot seeds in " KY jelly" ( plain not chocolate or strawberry etc.
in a big bore syringe in the airing cupboard and hope to be able to deposit blobs of sprouted seed in the beds at every three inches or so along a straight edge. The duty chemist did look amused when I asked it it had fungicides or spermicides in it even though I'd told her what I wanted it for .
I've done this presprouting /sowing before and run out yards of carrots etc using poly bags with the ends carefully snipped to give a tiny exit hole and used fungicide free wall paper paste for the medium but nowadays it's all got various anti mould /fungicides added and that kills off any hope of germinations.
If this works in KY i'll be trying to use guar gum powder made up as a boiled paste and see it that works & also trial xanthum gum for the same reason as they are all vey cheap food grade thickeners .. they are easily available on eBay etc.
Come to think of that I do have some frozen guar gum paste in the big outside chest type deep freezer that is going to get defrosted as soon as I finish this post but as it's two years old it may have lost a bit of usefulness.