A little bit of gardening

Because I'm here, and the gardening geek (deeply offended geek wasn't in google's dictionary) side of me is dying to write about this, I'm going to post about my tomatoes.

I'm growing 3 types this year, which is ambitious for me. Last year, I grew one type and they almost perished. Essentially I forgot to water them and then watered them too much. The roots were underdeveloped, it was very sad. I managed to salvage them by burying the stem and they did survive. The tomatoes weren't that good. This year I will do better.

Marmande tomatoes in the foreground, Alisa Craig in the background

So yesterday, I pricked out my Marmande tomatoes. If you're not a seedling person, pricking out is when you get a pencil or a similar implement and use it to lift the seedling's roots up whilst you hold it by the leaves. The aim is not to destroy the stem whilst transplanting. Weirdly it said on the packet to prick out when the leaves had opened. Normally it says to prick out when the true leaves have formed.
So I did and now have a small army of pots:

Marmande tomatoes planted up

Next I planted the final type, which are the one I failed abysmally at last year.

Red Alert seeds being planted

You can just about see the seeds. This is before they got their final sprinkling of soil. You're supposed to sow them under glass (my gran uses cling film and newspaper) but I just stick it in a plastic bag, which seems to do the trick. Fingers crossed they'll come up.