The Cottage Smallholder

A couple of weeks ago I started planting veg seeds. The front room is the only part of the house which gets direct sunlight so the windowsill is covered in plant pots.

Last year was the first time I used our home-made compost and there was a problem with 'foreign' seeds which must have got into the compost and germinated alongside the veg. This year I sterilised the compost first by heating it for 1 hour in the oven at gas mark 1.

So far some of the peppers and chillies have germinated and some of the first round of salad veg are about an inch tall. On sunday I planted some more assorted salad veg seeds. This morning I was surprised to see that some have germinated already after only 2 days. The seeds aren't in a propagator, they're just in pot. I really wasn't expecting them to germinate so quickly. I'll keep an eye on them to make sure they are what I'm expecting, and not weed seeds which survived the oven.