Sprouting Broad Bean Seeds

March 22, 2011 by

We’ve tried two different ways of starting our broad bean seeds this year.  The first was to plant the seeds into small pots which gave us an excellent germination rate.  Secondly we had a go at “sprouting” the seeds by placing them on some damp kitchen roll, covering them with another sheet of damp kitchen roll, and then covering them with cling film to stop them drying out.  After 4 days we had managed a 100% success rate and this is what our sprouting seeds looked like.Sprouting Broad Bean Seeds

These 30 seeds have been planted into the ground.  It’s a good easy way of germinating your seeds but once they have sprouted you need to plant them whatever the weather.  Germinating your seeds in pots is more work but you do have the luxury of time, meaning you can wait for a nice sunny day to plant them.

All our broad bean seeds this year are our own that we saved from last year, so whilst they might not look as pretty as those you get from a packet, they didn’t cost us anything, and no-one sees them once they are 3 inches under the ground!  Let’s hope they produce lots of lovely broad beans.


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Second planting of chillies and capsicums

March 8, 2011 by

Our chilli germination rate this year has not been good.  Only one of our 6 chilli seeds has germinated.  Chillies can be quite tricky to get going, often taking up to 2-3 weeks to come up, but after 6 weeks in our airing cupboard I am finally giving up on them!  I now have 5 freshly planted chilli seeds back in the airing cupboard  (they need warm soil to germinate, ideally 25-30°C), and am keeping my fingers crossed.

We haven’t got very many capsicum pepper plants either.  We think we planted these too shallow.  So,  I have planted another 3 and they are with the chillies.  Our seeds are from the Real Seed Catalogue, “Kaibi Round No 2″ Early Sweet Pepper and “Iranian Round” Chilli Pepper.  We grew the same varieties last year and they both did very well, so we are expecting the same again this year, if we can only get them started!


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Excellent Germination of Broad Beans

March 4, 2011 by

To redress the recent series of mini disasters, I’m pleased to be able to report that we’ve had all but one of our 70+ broad beans germinate successfully.

The seeds are ones we gathered from last year’s crop, variety – “Medes Broad Beans”.  We started them off in pots (in the greenhouse) and will be planting them out next weekend when they’re about an inch tall.  Starting them in pots is, I admit,  a little high maintenance but the germination rates are generally excellent and planting out plants rather than seeds also means that you can avoid gaps in your rows.

We’ve always done French beans (green beans) and runner beans in pots too, but this year as an experiment, we’ll be trying some in pots, some straight in the soil and some done as my dad does, pre-germinating them under damp kitchen paper and then planting them out when the rootlets are a centimetre long.  Whichever works best we’ll do from now on!


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