We hope you have survived storm Eunice, it's been super-windy here in Devon. Some of our grower friends have had their poly-tunnels ripped to shreds. Our heart goes out to them - wind can be a polytunnel's worst enemy.

We have been busy planting our biennial root crops this week which have been in storage over winter. This year they will flower and makes seeds in our tunnel.

We've also been busy sowing quite a few things like chillies, aubergines, onions, lettuce and various other salads.. We will sow our tomatoes soon and thought we would share how we do this. Read on to find out.

For ideas of what you can sow in February click below.

How we propagate our tomatoes, chillies and aubergines

1. Fill a 9cm pot or standard size seed tray with fine seed sowing compost
2. Sprinkle some seeds on the surface and then cover with a thin layer of compost ~5mm and press down to make sure seeds have good contact with the compost
3. Water with a very fine rose watering can being careful not to displace the seeds
4. Place in a warm spot, you can use an electric propagator, or a sunny windowsill above a radiator. The seeds will germinate best with even temperatures of 20-30C, if they get cold at night they will take longer to come up
5. Once the seedlings have emerged, they can be pricked out into module trays or pots depending on your space availability. If you use modules you may need to pot on again once the plants are 4 inches tall
6. Keep well watered but do be careful not to over-water, especially chillies. Your compost should be as moist as a moist chocolate cake and no wetter or the plants will suffer
7. Once risk of frost has passed, probably around mid-May your plants can be planted out in a sunny sheltered spot or under cover. They may still benefit from being covered by a bit of horticultural fleece if the weather is cold

We were very pleased to have some of our tomato varieties (Santiam Sunrise and Ruthje) featured in the Guardian last week - you can the article here.

We have a growing guide for tomatoes on our website, you can find it here.

Growing agretti / salsola

Have you heard of agretti aka salsola? It's a wonderful Italian salad leaf which is becoming increasingly popular here in the UK, particularly among chefs. It can also be steamed and stirred through pasta and other dishes. It has a delicate 'chivey-samphire' flavour.

Our friends at Trill Farm Garden in East Devon have produced agretti seeds for us last season and we are really pleased to have them in our catalogue now. We are confident they are only UK-grown organic agretti seeds available on the market.

Agretti seeds are not actually seeds botanically, but are small plantlets. They do not store well and have fairly erratic germination. The 'seed' must be produced fresh each year and will not last much beyond April.

They should be sown in February or March in modules or April outside. They make a wonderful companion plant to tomatoes (see pic below). Why not give them a go this year? Let us know how you get on with them :)

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Happy sowing :)

Fred, Ronja, and the rest of the team

P.S. if you are a fan of chicory and radicchio than we have some exciting news for you coming soon ;)

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