Project 365 day 143: Germination!

The borlotti beans are germinating with great enthusiasm! My previous sowings of beans this year have not been as successful as I would normally expect - the white runner beans and dwarf French beans have not had very good germination rates, and an entire tray of cannellini beans have failed to produce a single plant - so although it's getting quite late for starting them, it's a joy to see the borlottis bursting through the surface and growing visibly by the hour. I have started these in J's room, which is the cosiest place in the house, and every time I go in I see a couple more of those little green hooks curling out of the compost, and more emerging leaves pressing against the lid.

The chilly weather has meant all the vegetable plants seem to be progressing very slowly - a lot of things I sowed in March are still terribly small. I'm also wondering if some of the seeds I had from last year have perhaps been a bit warm in their winter cupboard; I generally have a fairly good idea which seeds are good for two or even three years and which really need to be bought new every year, but this year a lot of things seem reluctant. The worst disaster to date is the complete failure of the first batch of courgettes, which were started in the heated propagator as usual so should have been fine. We eat huge numbers of them, and they are normally the easiest of things to grow; a second batch are showing signs of life, so I hope they will still produce a reasonable crop. Normally, I would plant them out by the end of May, but we now have more frost forecast later this week, and may have to tuck the potato plants, which are doing nicely, back under fleece again. It's not what we expected when we moved to sunny Kent!