Plug Plants

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Friday, 11th April, 2008

lollo rosso ON 'GARDENERS' WORLD' this evening, Carol Klein reminded us that a green garden isn't one that you buy in, it's one that you propagate yourself and add to by exchanging your home-grown plants with friends. Even so, we couldn't resist the plug plants, £1.99 for a tray of 15, that were on offer when we popped into the Netto supermarket this morning. We went for lollo rosso lettuce (left) and green cabbage; vigorous little plants that are just ready for pricking out into compost. They're ingeniously planted in a mini-plastic greenhouse in tiny cone-shaped plastic trays that exactly match the shape of the plastic dibber we keep in the greenhouse. The trays sit in water-retaining gel. It should be easy to re-use these mini-propagators so we're intending to plant them with rocket and basil.

We're also got lots of vegetable seeds ready to sow but it's good to have 15 lettuces up and growing instantly on the kitchen windowsill and 15 cabbages in small pots under cover in a couple of plastic seed-tray propagators in the greenhouse.