Time for my first Celery sowing

The weather was a bit better today but we have suffered from snow and hard frost for the last week or so. Today was spent in the greenhouse re arranging my leeks & onions and sowing my first lot of Celery, I've elected to try Star Burst this year and I'm hoping to have some ready to show On the 31st of July at The Black Isle show, hence why I'm starting so early. I also sowed my Parsley today in the hope that I'll get some plants for our local shows. I've sieved my Levingtoms F2 compost then placed the seed trays in water for 5 mins to allow the compost to soak up the water. Then I sowed the seeds and covered them with fine Vermerculite and placed into my propagator.

Here are the two seed trays with Globo seedlings and "Matador" a shallot which I hope to grow for the local shallot from seed classes. The Matador has only been sown 10 days so I'm fairly pleased with the germination.

I've always struggled with my onion seedlings and getting them to stand up straight. Here is a "Red Barron" seedling with a home made support. These I have just made this year and seem to be doing a job.

This is an update of my earliest batch of leeks. They have 5 inch collars on them and as you can see they are starting to stretch quite nicely. I am slightly worried that they have "stalled" a bit this last week but I've re arranged the growing area for them and they now have a tube heater underneath them which I hope will encourage them t continue growing.

This is my second batch of leeks which I have just added 5 inch collars to, They were only recently poted into their 2 ltr pots and I'm hoping they will now grow on.

I now have all my leeks under the same light with the youngest batch at the front. These were leeks I got from Dave Metcalfe and appear to have broader leaves than my other ones. I will pot them up next week.

This is the my onions that I got in plugs on the 2nd of January I'm potting them up into 1 ltrs pots of M3 compost with perlite. They are growing on nicely and the best have 4 or 5 true leaves and 14 inches tall.

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Comment by kim bowers on January 27, 2013 at 20:53: brilliant blog :-) learnt loads thanks

Comment by David Ford on January 28, 2013 at 12:48: Heck of a lot of dedicated effort if you want first class results hence "no pain no gain" good luck in the shows