I’ve succumbed to the lure of grow-lights. My vegetables are going to have to do well this year – my outgoings have taken a bit of a battering in the pursuit of happy chilli seedlings! I’ve got a timer to provide 12 hours of artificial sun, which saves me having to remember. Not told Him Indoors yet, because there’s enough eye-rolling when trays of tin foil-collared seedlings start appearing on the bedroom windowsill…

Naturally I filled the propagator as soon as I ordered it: Alberto’s Locoto Rocoto, Chupetinho, Fish, Orange Wonder, Pasilla Bajio, Satan’s Kiss, Trepadeira Werner were all tucked up nicely with my best wishes for speedy germination. And they have just started to hatch! The lights have arrived just in time. The others can wait to February when there is a bit more light in the day.

I have tried and failed to get decent peat-free sowing compost locally. My nearest garden centre & DIY stores have GroSure. I tried that last year. It was horrible stuff, very twiggy/lumpy, and more importantly, my plants did very badly in it. Nowhere nearby stocks Sylvagrow (which was the top recommendation on Twitter) but a garden centre near Mum’s apparently stocks New Horizons.

It does baffle me that, despite a growing chorus of calls for gardeners to stop using peat, it is so ruddy hard to find places that stock decent alternatives. There are umpteen shades of peat-based compost to be had, which are just feeding our/my peat habit.

Mini-rant over. As you were…