In the spirit of not winning the prize for the fastest ever germination, I can faithfully report that I tried out a sowing of Amsterdam Forcing Carrots on 24th February with the two rows sown kept under cloches until the end of March. At that point not a single seedling had emerged, so I was just wondering about whether to resow at the April full moon when, hey presto, today I see two seedlings having emerged, no less than 45 days after sowing them! We shall see whether more emerge.
Whether there is some kind of sensing going on, I don’t know, but my Autumn King carrots and Tender and True parsnips, sown two days before the March full moon, are also starting to emerge today. They have taken 20 days from sowing.
I have just sown some back up onions (Sturon and Bedfordshire Champion) as the April weather here is a bit on the cool side and they are roaring through either in multi-sown modules (Sturon) or single seed sowing in multi wells. They took 7 days to come through. This time I have used home-prepared ‘seed compost’ using a mixture of peat, John Innes Number 2, perlite and a few goodies as the local MPC doesn’t appear to do much good for onions or leeks. No sign yet of Boltardy beetroot or White Lisbon onions sown direct into the ground on the same day.