At this time of year and particularly since I have been exhibiting at the Chelsea flower show, I have to be particularly vigilant regarding my sowing dates, believe me it ‘s all too easy to get confused between my sowing times for Chelsea and my normal sowings for the Summer shows. Sowing times for Chelsea are critical, far more so than if I was simply sowing for use in the kitchen, each and every vegetable has to me at it’s peak for the first Monday of the show if they are to have the desired effect. Having them ready two weeks before or two weeks after would be no trouble at all for the kitchen, you simply eat them whenever they are ready. For Chelsea though, it would be a disaster as I wouldn’t be able to show them at their peak of perfection.

I have to admit that my first Chelsea was the worst as I really didn’t have any historical sowing dates to go by and I simply had to work it out from my normal Summer shows time table and add a few weeks here and there. As it happened I was very close to the mark with most of them with the only real disaster being some of the French beans that were ready three weeks before time.

Of course a diary is absolutely essential for me as I can now look back over the past three years delaying some sowings by a few days here and there whilst sowing others a few days earlier. One benefit that I have of growing the vegetables at the University complex at Bangor is that they are grown under constant computer controlled temperatures under artificial lighting that give the plants a steady source of light for 16 hours every day. This means that once the sowing date is correct it then rarely changes as the conditions are standardised for year to year.

One thing though that can have an effect on the plants is the actual weather condition prevailing through the growing period. Continuously dull dark days has no effect as the lights can cope with that, but if we have a very early Spring with lots of sunny days, then the large automatic vents in the roof would be opened up more frequently thus allowing a more regular change of air which can boost growth considerably. Another factor of course would be the fact that good sunny days are far more efficient than the strongest of artificial lights again giving stronger and earlier growth.

One important job that I have carried out during late November to early December is to go through last years diary making a note of all the sowing dates and altering them if they were slightly too early or too late. This was the case last year with the some of the newer seed that I had from America, seed such as the white and pink aubergine could have done with another fortnight to fully mature, so their sowing dates have been adjusted accordingly.

My leeks for Chelsea this year appear to be the best that I have ever grown at this time of year, they are really growing well and currently in 10" pots with 15" collars and getting ready to be moved into their final pot. The onions have also improved since being given extra bench space to grow them on in the warmest of the three greenhouses, they are now in 7" pots and will eventually end up in a ten inch one.

The long carrots of my own selected strain were sown during early December as well as the parsnips and both are now growing away really well. From now on I shall be sowing some vegetable seed nearly every other day between my Summer sowings and Chelsea with a range of peppers being sown during this coming week. One thing to remember with peppers is that you do need two sowing dates for the sweet capsicums if you are to stage them green and as a mature red sweet fruits. Taking a chance that you might get a few red ones for a given show from a single sowing isn’t really going to work out.

This week I shall sow the F1 variety Gypsy which is available from Suttons and I really can’t speak highly enough of this versatile variety. If you have tried to grow peppers in the past with mixed results, then Gypsy is the one for you, a prolific cropper producing an enormous amount of fruit from the one plant. The fruits are tapered having a pale lime green colour that turn to a fiery red colour when fully mature which I hope to achieve from this sowing; I shall sow another batch in a months time to produce the green ones. To prove how prolific a cropper this variety is I had two very large baskets full of fruits for Chelsea last year from just six plants each growing in a florist bucket with plenty of drainage holes drilled in the base.

Now that we are on the threshold of a new gardening year, let me advise each one of you to purchase a diary, not a pocket one either, a large full size A4 which will give you plenty of room to write down everything on a daily basis that you have done in the garden. Believe me I just couldn’t manage without one, I have diaries going back nearly thirty years and they make excellent reading I can tell you, painting a wonderful picture of the way that I have grown my vegetables over the years.

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