LIghts On!

Put the growtubes on today for the first time. I've only got onions under at the moment but have leeks coming this week so i shall bung those under aswell. Started building a temporary growbox out of turkey foil and the reflective stuff you stick behind radiators to reflect the heat back into your room. The temperature under the tubes will now regulate at 10oC which is just enough to keep evrything ticking over nicely.
Went out this afternoon and bought 4x 100ltr bales of Irish moss peat ready for the potato bags. I bought a shredder a few weeks back so i'm going to try passing the peat though this as it took me ages last year sieving it with the rotasieve. I'm growing 40 bags of potatoes this year, NVS Amour and NVS Sherine. All the bags and seed potatoes i've purchased from JBA see potatoes again. This is my second year dealing with them and i woukld reccommend them to anyone.
Got all my dahlia tubers boxed up now, thoroughly dried and any cut surfaces are dusted with sulphur to stop any areas of rot forming. I use old mushroom boxes (these can be picked up from your local greengrocers or at market stalls) to box t tubers and i keep the compost dry until after christmas when i will start to water every week or so depending on the weather.

More or less every show grower i know likes to think they have one thing that they grow best and i like to think mine is Chrysanthemums. And to that end i have got most of the stools boxed up aswell. Again, i use old mushroom boxes and keep them on the dry side until after christmas which is when i shall start to take the first batch of cuttings. (If i have enough i am thinking of selling rooted cuttings of my best show varieties- anybody interested please do let me know).

More on chrysanthemums in the weeks to come...
Well, i've come to the end of another post and i'll leave you with the weather forecast here in Stourbridge:

It will be 25oC with lots of sunshine.  The wind will be a southerly one bringing warmer air in helping all those Midlands growers to get a headstart on the rest of the country!