Time to get planting!

I was strangely excited to start planting seeds again after a years hiatus. On the heated propagating mat inside I have peppers, tomato, eggplant and basil. I've being quite restrained this year on the tomato front - only 5 different varieties (cherry rainbow, and mortgage lifter for eating, and oxheart, principe borghese and san marzano for bottling), although I confess to going a bit OTT on eggplant varieties (little finger, snnowy and greek). My excuse is....well, other than the seed was only $3 a packet there is no excuse :-)

On the direct sowing front I have also planted out snow pea, sugar snap, beetroot, swede, lettuce mix and carrot. For the lettuce and carrot I trialed a nifty UK seed sewing device (seedsava) muma and papa Jerry gave me. I confess I have had it for a while, but really haven't put it to good use until now. However, on small seeds like carrot and lettuce it is brilliant. There are 4 different seed holders, each with a different size seed hole. Orange is the second smallest, and good for lettuce and carrot. You put the sizy you want into the base, and click so it is shut (seed holes covered so they can't fall out). Seeds go in the spoon part, then you shake them along the device until each hole is filled with seed. Then you place it on the bed where you want to sew, and simple slide the coloured section along, which opens the hole and lets some seed drop in. You do get a few seeds in each hole, but they are sewn at intervals making it easier to thin. It was easy, and I suspect there there was less wastage compared to broadcasting the seed.

I'll update you on progress as the seeds come up.

7 days later and here's the update - I hit save not publish and just realised :-). The basil and most of the tomatoes are looking good - the cherry rainbow is the forlorn punnet in blue. These seeds were just about at the end of their use by date so I'm not entirely surprised germination is almost non existent. The eggplants, chilli and capsicum are taking longer, but the first eggplants are just pushing up.