Garden Bears' World - Seeds and Sets

Hello everyone!  It's time for Garden Bears' World with me, Endon Bear, and my two little helpers, Waverley and Dudley. 

A week and a half ago, human guardian Polar decided to start sowing some seeds for the coming year and asked me and the cubs to help.

We started by cleaning the seed tray. to make sure there was no old compost, mould or pests in it.

Then we filled the modules with nice crumbly seed compost.  Dudley and Waverley took it in turns to do this, using a teaspoon like a little spade.

Soon, all the modules were full and the compost firmed down, and we were ready to sow some seeds.  We started with several varieties of tomatoes, using up some of the seeds saved from last year.

I started with my favourite tomato, the stripy "Tigerella".  I showed the cubs how to put two little seeds in each module, cover them with a small amount of extra compost, then to put in a label with the name of the plant and the date in at the end of the row.  

Polar has made the labels out of recycled lateral flow tests after seeing a youTube clip of someone doing this, but she says you should really only use the negative test ones and dispose of the test strips hygienically.

Waverley sowed the next row, then carefully covered the seeds over with a little extra compost, and Polar made him a label.  Then Dudley did a row, then I did another one, so we had four different tomato varieties.

After that, we sowed some seeds of chillies and sweet peppers, then Polar put the tray in the living room window with a plastic cover over it to keep the seeds nice and warm.  The tomatoes started to germinate after just a week, but there is no sign of the peppers yet.

After that, we went down to the greenhouse to help Polar put onion sets in modules, to start them growing ready for planting out on the allotment in a few weeks, when they have made some roots.  This year, we are growing red onions as well as the usual Sturon variety, which are white ones with brown skins.

Polar noticed there were greenfly on her lettuce plants in the greenhouse, so we helped her to look for ladybirds in the garden.  We found six of them on the yew trees in the front garden, so we brought them into the greenhouse and hope they will eat the aphids, and lay their eggs in there so the baby ladybirds can eat aphids too.

Then it was time for the cubs to see what was growing in the garden.  They loved these little irises, which Polar planted in pots on the patio table and which are all in full flower now.

Then they ran about in the borders, where they found lots of snowdrops.  Even though I had help Polar transplant some into the front garden last spring, there seem to be as many as ever in the back, and lots of glorious hellebores again.

Dudley and Waverley could see the hellebore flowers very well, because they are such small bears and can walk right underneath the blooms.

After that, they climbed the pots around the rose garden and found some Tete-a-tete miniature daffodils just starting to flower, and near that the flowers opening on the rosemary bush.

"Our fur smells all herby now!" said Dudley, when he came back indoors for hot chocolate and biscuits.  

But both cubs agreed it was a very nice smell and that they had really enjoyed being gardening bears, so I'm sure you'll see them again in another Garden Bears World post.