Pig Sty Avenue

Here's a fun fact for you: slugs LOVE parsley, but leave lemon balm untouched. This morning I have attempted the rescue of 40 parsley seedlings. Their cotyledon have been badly mauled, but despite this their first true leaves were emerging. So I pricked them out into modules. I've balanced the module tray on a big tin cup in a tray of water to frustrate the slugs and give the seedlings a chance of recovering.  In front of them are lemon balm, also showing first true leaves, but nevertheless still tiny. Big enough to be pricked out this weekend. I want a lot of them, a patch 12x6ft, so 80 plants. It's a genuine therapeutic herb: Scholar gives almost 3000 hits of mentions of Melissa officinalis since 2018. We'll mostly use it for tea.

...I pricked out 40 sorrel seedlings. The 12 sunflowers have gone outside to harden off. The rest of the seedlings are still a couple of weeks away from pricking out, and I think the tomatoes might need another month before they can go in the ground. I've been keeping gorse clippings to use as anti-slug and -snail barriers, but was disgusted to find a small slug hiding amongst the the clippings in their bucket, so maybe slugs can negotiate their way around the prickles, the wee bastards. Getting the sunflowers outside leaves a space on the poly-tunnel table, so, probably tomorrow, I'll sow the rose seeds which have been stratifying in the fridge for 2 or 3 months now.

As I said, 'germinating like mad' . What I've learned here, is that I needn't have bought a packet of 3000 seeds. 300 would have been enough. The question now is, do I prick them out into 1 or 2 trays of 40 modules? I'm thinking probably the latter, giving me a big old patch of 80 plants. It's clearly a significant culinary plant, particularly in France, where, apparently, 'l'oseille' is an idiomatic term for money .