Its been a week of ice and snow so no chance to get those fence posts in or do any gardening. Just enjoy the chance to sledge and build snowmen with the girls. For things to do indoors there were two big jobs this week which definitely were overdue. One was potty training my youngest daughter and the other was potting on some poor wee seedlings who had been left far too long in their first small pots over Christmas.
Being a full time mum is certainly not glamorous especially at the start of this week, with lots of accidents, lots of washing and a washing machine with frozen pipes! Pulling lots of clean washing out the machine to hang up I realised it was wet but not from being washed, as it had never been on at all! Flower growing is not always glamorous either, especially in January in a leaking cold conservatory making a mess with lots of compost. But it is exciting with the promise that these small plants will grow on to produce lots of flowers later in the year!
My advice for potting on would be don’t leave it late like I did! No long roots showing out the bottom of pots or pale yellow leaves on your plant! This shows your plants are lacking in nutrients and probably dehydrated. As soon as your seedlings have a couple of pairs of true leaves and are a couple of inches high they will be happier in a bigger pot. This will give the plant roots more room to grow. I planted up my Honesty, Wallflower and Hesperis seedlings using John Innes number 2 compost. They were transplanted from their small 2 inch pots into larger 4 inch (10cm) pots, but a 3 inch (8cm) one would be fine.
I now have a happy little lady out of nappies and some much happier plants out of little pots!