First The Farmer Sows His Seeds

Sam helped me sow some vegetable seeds (and a few flowers). We'll grow these on indoors to the seedling stage, then harden them off and plant them in the allotment in spring. We sowed some tomatoes, cauliflowers, cabbages and sweet peas.

Sowing seeds is easy, child's play you might say. Most of what you need to know is printed on the back of the seed packet - what time of year to sow, whether indoors or out, what to do next and so on.

Apart from that the main things to remember are these:

• Sow more seeds than you want plants. Some seeds will fail to germinate. Some will grow weak and spindly. We sowed three seeds in each station. When they've sprung up, we'll thin out all but the strongest.
• Don't bury them too deeply. Generally speaking, they need to be buried under the same thickness of compost as their size. So big seeds like broad beans are about an inch long, and need to be buried under about an inch of compost. Small seeds like tomatoes are about 1/16" and need to be covered with a pinch of compost from your fingers. Tiny seeds like lettuce are barely specks, and can be sprinkled on the surface.
• Keep the compost moist. Don't let it dry out but don't flood them either. A plant mister is just the job for seeds and seedlings, or let water soak into the pots from below.