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March days can be warm and the nights cold. With daylight hours stretching out, plants are growing apace in the polytunnel and greenhouse.
This means new sowings should be popping up fast and over wintered ones will be bulking up for a final fling. Keep an eye on watering and feeding and make sure all the seedlings are looked after; they may be small now, but they will be big and bountiful in the months ahead

Tomatoes

You can sow tomatoes this month for summer crops. Seed sown last month should have germinated and seedlings will have two sturdy seed leaves. If seed was sown in trays, the seedlings will be ready for pricking out into 8cm (3in) pots. I use a knitting needle to carefully lift each seedling. Don’t damage the roots if possible. If the stem gets broken, you may as well discard the seedling, as it will not survive.
Make a hole in the compost in the pot and drop a seedling into this. Firm the compost gently around the stem, letting the leaves just settle at the surface of the compost; this helps avoid leggy young plants, particularly if seed has been germinated indoors.
Keep pots at a temperature of 15C (60F) and out of strong sunlight for the first few days after transplanting. Once the seedlings are established they can be grown on in full sunlight, but try to keep the temperature around the mid teens.

Peppers

Sow these as early in the month as possible. They are slow to germinate, often taking three weeks or even longer. I usually sow peppers in individual small pots and label carefully. Pepper plants look the same when small and I don’t want to end up growing on all chillis, or all sweet varieties. It is always worth growing a mixture of different varieties, as some will inevitably perform better than others. 'Gypsy' and 'Tasty Grill' are two that perform well for me.

Aubergines

You can still sow these at the beginning of the month, but do choose the earliest variety possible. If you leave sowing too late, plants just don’t seem to flower at the right time and fruit is small and sparse. If you forget to sow, then I’d opt for buying plants in May or June. Prick out seedlings started last month into individual pots and grow on at around18C (65F).

 

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