Time to plant vegie seedlings

IT IS now time to plant seedlings of all those cold, sensitive crops.

Tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, sweetcorn, pumpkin, chillies or capsicums can all go in now.

This is an exciting time for gardeners, with the huge number of varieties of these vegetables almost overwhelming.

If you have the space, plant a variety that you have had good results with and then plant a new variety of a particular vegetable you haven't tried before.

This is a great way to learn, gives you varied maturity times and often cropping over a wider period.

Choose a sunny area and make sure you prepare the soil well to get the best results. Mulch with straw and treat with a seaweed tonic to get your seedlings off to a great start.

Add dolomite to areas where you are going to grow seeds of peas and beans, as they will benefit from a slightly alkaline soil. When planting seeds or seedlings of sweetcorn, plant in blocks rather than rows.

The flowers are wind pollinated and have a greater chance of producing more cobs this way.

Terrific tomatoes

THERE is a huge range of tomato varieties to choose from.

Garden centres are full of punnets, small pots and grafted plants right now and you can still start from seed if you want to.

Mail order companies increase that range with a large number of heirloom varieties, so don't be afraid to try something different.

Traditional varieties such as grosse lisse, apollo improved, mighty red and roma are always popular.

Children love the taste and ease of eating cherry tomatoes, so get them to grow their own with sweet bite, tiny Tim, or the new release tomatoberry, which is very sweet and shaped like a strawberry.

Try sugarlump with its bright red 3cm tomatoes, in trusses of six to 12 sweet fruits.

If you are growing tomatoes in containers use the largest possible pot with a top-quality potting mix.

Varieties such as san marzano, patio prize and window box roma are all perfect. And if you want to grow some in a large hanging basket, then tumbling red and tumbling yellow produce heavy clusters of small but sweet fruit.