Tomato Geek

I think I am a geek. I must be. In fact I am totally convinced of it. Despite having a relatively small space to grow tomatoes and quite bad luck with blight - I think it blows our way on purpose - I still couldn't resist the lure of little packets of tomato seed calling out from me at a distance shouting "BUY ME, BUY ME, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT SO BUY ME!!!" So I did.

Here are the siren-like packets! I bought them from Nicky's Nurseries who I have never used before but seemed to be relatively quick and friendly. I particularly liked the little seed marker you got free in each packet. I didn't like the shiny, non-biodegradable packets though but I'm sure they have their reasons for using them.

I'm getting very excited about sowing these tomatoes and I need to get a wriggle on to allow them as much sun and heat as possible as I get the feeling that these may need more than is traditional for an English summer. Hopefully I won't have to sit in the greenhouse shining an infra-red lamp on them like little lost lambs; I'm sure this lovely frosty winter we have had is going to bring a wonderfully hot summer...I can feel it in my bones!

I've been setting up a Planting Calendar this evening - this is another geek in me - on Excel and it is looking pretty good. I'm hoping that it will enable me to refer back to years gone by for useful bits of information I'm bound to forget as the grey matter goes over the next few decades...here's hoping. For the useful reference that is and not the deterioration of the grey matter!

I suspect there will be further tweaks to the calendar; I have already tried adding photos but I may include that in a different section. I'm going to use a good old-fashioned notebook as well but I wanted to have a graphical representation of what was being sown, planted out and picked when and so far I'm dead chuffed!