Sowing seeds

When we first moved into our house 26 years ago there was a greenhouse in the garden. It was quite big and old, but  over the next few years was well used.  We couldn't afford to heat it or buy any staging, but we managed. My husband built me some makeshift staging out of old doors and wood he had lying around. I grew tomatoes, tried out cucumbers and peppers and grew perennial and annual flowers from seed.

Gradually over the next few years work and other things took over my life and I found I had less time for the greenhouse. It was getting into a bad state, it looked very unsightly. There were broken glass panes and the door was broken. We decided to get rid of it as it was not being used. It went to a good home (we gave it to someone who had an allotment) and we put a new shed on the site of the old greenhouse.

A few years later I now have an allotment and a small raised bed area for vegetables in our garden, so  I'm now back to growing veg from seeds and without a greenhouse I have to make do with other ways.

I start seeds off indoors.

 I have seeds growing on the kitchen windowsill
 

in the dining room

in one of the spare bedrooms

in the back porch which has now become my new greenhouse

I also have a couple of growhouses outside. 

At this time of year I have so many pots of seeds germinating in different places that I have to be careful I don't forget where they all are!

I start seeds off indoors and once they have been transplanted into larger trays, I  move them to the back porch  or to the growhouse outside. At the moment I have brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, basil, parsley, cucumbers, celeriac, squash. Also flower seeds of sweet peas, dianthus, lupin, penstemon, cerinthe. Every week I am sowing more seeds. They are all over the house. My husband is not a gardener, so he has a lot to put up with, but he seems quite fascinated by these seeds which are sprouting daily.


I do miss my old greenhouse, but even if we could afford to buy one now, because of changes we have made to the garden, we don't have a good place to put one. I suppose the most thing I miss about the greenhouse is the tomatoes. I now grow them outside and haven't had much luck really because they always get blight. I might try growing them in the porch this year.

But it just goes to show that you don't need to have a greenhouse to grow veg and flowers. And it's much cheaper than buying the plants from the garden centre.