Hello, today I'm going to tell you about some of the seeds that you can sow in January.
I'm Liz Zorab and this is Byther Farm.
Where you live in the country is going to make a huge difference to what
you can sow right now. And whether you have some heated space, like a heated
greenhouse, will also make a difference. But you can sow some things to go in your
cold greenhouse or into a cold frame and others you can sow using a heated
propagator to give them a warmth they need to get going. So if you have a cold
greenhouse or a cold frame - and cold frames are really easy to make, you can
do it just using four pieces of wood and that piece of either plastic or a sheet
of glass over the top of it and that would be enough to allow some seedlings
to grow on until spring.
You can so broad beans something like The Sutton.
Sow them into pots and then pop them into your cool greenhouse or into a cold
frame to grow on and that should give you a really nice early crop of broad beans.
They are big, big fat, healthy-looking pods and these are
pretty healthy-looking beans! These are a good size!
And you can start off aubergines (egg plants)
and they will need some heat, in heated propagator, to get going but you can
start those off now and they like a really nice long growing season.
I grew aubergines here in the poly tunnel for the first time this year and
they were just wonderful. I'm not a huge fan of the very big aubergines and I grew
ones that were just little fingers and I think that was the variety that they were called.
There are also some carrot seeds that you can sow now,
something like Amsterdam Forcing means that you can get the carrots off to a
very early start in the year.
If you use a heated propagator you can
start off onion seeds and shallot seeds. I've never grown onions or shallots
from seeds, I always use sets.
And this variety is called Senshyu Yellow.
It's a yellow skinned variety. I've grown them before, I didn't find
them hugely strong in flavor, but actually I really rather liked them.
So in they go! And as with all onions, shallots and garlic
it's the root end down. The easy way to tell that is that the pointy end goes up!
But this year I'm going to be growing some shallots, some of the long thin pink
skin shallots from seed which I will sow towards the end of January.
There are also some brassicas that you can start off now. So something like
cauliflower All The Year Round, which we sowed in October and November.
So a variety like All The Year Round, you can sow this now and in two to three
weeks you should get your first seed leaves come up.
They can still be sown in
January and that should give you a summer crop of cauliflower.
And also cabbages - something like Greyhound which will give you a cabbage during the summer.
So all these outer leaves will go to the birds and we will have the cabbage from the center.
So that's ours. Yummy-yum!
You can also sow leeks during January.
Just make sure when you choose your variety that it's one that can be
sown early in the year.
I don't sow them very thinly, but I don't sow them in
clumps either, so it's nice a row of of leek seeds and I leave them to grow.
And here I'm very pleased to say are the leeks.
Now I'm not growing grass here, these are leeks.
These are lovely little baby leeks and
they're they're doing really well, they're about five-six inches high now.
There are several salad crops that you can grow now. Sow spring onions. You can
continue to grow peas just for the shoots. Things like kale, this is a red
Russian kale, these leaves are lovely in a salad. Some beet leaves, things like
mustard leaves will grow now. And also how you can carry on sowing things like
corn salad which is also called lamb's lettuce.
And don't forget those seedlings
that have grown from the seeds that you planted in the autumn. They can be
planted out into the ground as long as it's not too soggy and waterlogged and
it's also that the ground isn't frozen.
So things like young cabbages. These are
the cabbages that I sowed in the middle of September.
They're absolutely desperate to get into the ground now. I'll get them in,
I'll put some netting over them - not to prevent the butterflies but that netting
will just give them a little bit of protection during the cooler months that
we have ahead of us.
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And keep on harvesting and picking the things that are growing for you right now.
So we have an abundance of lettuce so I'm eating
plenty of salads. I'm topping them with
the pea shoots that have been growing and I keep on popping in a few more peas
every couple of weeks to keep a continuous supply.
So there you go a few
seeds that you can start sowing in January if you want to.
Now here at Byther Farm I'm just popping in a few salad leaves and the peas just to keep us
ticking over and then towards the end of January, end of February and then in
March I'll start sowing in earnest.