Impatient

Gardeners are always impatient, aren't they? Well, I certainly am. It's scarcely a month since I started sowing seeds, but already I'm yearning for a harvest. I've put in seeds for some quick-growing vegetables to tide me over until the slower ones get going. Like this Baby Leaf salad, for instance:-

This is a mixture I assembled myself, comprising many different things, like lettuce, rocket, cress, corn salad, spinach, beetroot etc, etc. It is growing in a large plastic crate full of compost:

My seed distribution was a bit uneven, evidently! Actually it's not quite as bad as it seems at first sight, because if you look closely you can see several tiny red lettuces, which don't show up in the distant shot:

Some of these will be ready in a couple of days I think. I'm going to use it in "cut-and-come-again" style, snipping off individual leaves with a pair of scissors.

I also have some other lettuce seedlings which are nearly big enough for planting out:

...and some much smaller seedlings, which are nowhere near ready for transplanting yet. These are a mixture of "Valdor"( foreground), "Delicato" (the red one in the centre), and "Fristina" (rear). As you can see, the germination success rates have been a bit patchy. The seed-tray on the right is supposed to contain two different types of Endive, but one type failed completely to germinate, though to be fair, the seeds were quite old.

The Endives that did germinate are the variety "Pancalieri".



Elsewhere, in amongst my Broad Beans, I have a few Radishes that are just about ready for pulling:

Radishes are the classic impatient gardener's vegetable, because they can be ready to harvest within a month of sowing if the conditions are right - in other words wet and warm. This year I have put lots of Radishes in, sowing them as a catch-crop between the rows of slower-maturing veg. So far however, this is all I have harvested: