The Fenugreek Experiment

I've sown hundreds of fenugreek seeds in the greenhouse (which is going to have heating over the winter). I got the seeds from the Chinese supermarket in Town, and soaked them for three days in a small bucket of water: they are hard and unseedlike in the packet, but resemble wheat seeds after you soak them.

I scattered the seeds on, and raked them over roughly, so that some are on the surface, others will be a little below. After 48 hours, most of the ones on the surface are sprouting, so I'm anticipating a good germination ratio. (I knew they would sprout. In Libya, I put some in a tin on soaked tissue paper: they indeed sprouted well and I'd trim them to put in salads as one would with cress. After a week or so of this hotel-room farming, though, I looked into the tin and was disgusted to see hundreds of little beetles squirming around the seedlings' roots, like that insect motif in Blue Velvet.)

The bed in the greenhouse is garden soil which hasn't been cultivated for several years - the idea of the fenugreek is to add nitrogen and organic matter to it.

This is experimental because of course it's winter, and you generally sow fenugreek in spring. The temperature will not be less than 10C with the heating on. It remains to be seen how the plants react to short winter days.

Comments

  1. MichaelSat Sept 22, 08:16:00 pm BST

    You gave me the idea to try some fenugreek too. I stuck them straight in some soil that had just had spring onions in and they germinated within days. I'll see how they go and keep most of the packet back till spring.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Garry NixonSun Sept 23, 07:50:00 am BST

    If they're outdoors I expect the first frost will do for them, but they'll have added some nitrogen meanwhile.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MichaelSun Sept 23, 10:56:00 am BST

    That's what I thought, but you can't go wrong for 30p. Thanks again for the tip.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there
Read more

LTPTP XXV: We Shall Overcome

Image
We shall indeed.  It's a lovely wee tune to learn.  I've almost memorized it this morning, the idea being, when I encounter a piano, I want something to sit down and play on the bugger.  I've a feeling that my keyboard's keys are lighter than a proper piano's, and there'll be a bit of effort transferring the skills I've gotten so far.  Probably, at some point this year, I'll be in workplace with a piano.  I'll print off some simple music and scales, and work at it, but it's likely to be in a public place so I want something to avoid making a twat of myself initially. It feels right that this should be the first tune I learn by heart.
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more