[Lesley Silvester]

Signs of life in the chives but nothing in the rocket yet.  My salad leaves are showing but not growing much.

[VSS]

Hoed off the ground where I did the first sowings of turnip, beetroot spinach, carrots and peas as nothing has come up at all. Re-sowed turnips and beet, more rasdish and salad leaves, and planted out a dozen or so lettuces from the conservatory.

Fingers crossed this lot will grow.

[MAK]

I previously asked if people thought it would be a bad year for fruit. Zilch has set here- no walnuts cherries,plumsetc etc the lot hit by a late frost then gales. Last year  (our first here) was a bumper crop all rounds and we arrogantly thought we would be able to feed 2 new pigs from neighbours veg plots and orchards plus the nuts on the lanes.
30 degrees here yesterday so no doubt if we do have a few seeds that have popped up they are amongst the weeds and 2 feet high grass.This time last year everything was so advanced and the veg plot was amazing - now we have garlic, onions etc and spuds but nothing else -  neighbours will start planting out this week - maybe their years of gardening here has taught them that being miles from the coast and over a 1000 feet up means severe winters and hot summers. I guess we may catch up on the veg front but the loss of fruit is a real blow. lots to learn ! 

[Plantoid]

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.