I stood back from a bit of weeding this afternoon. Even though it was overcast and windy, I felt pretty grateful that this was my workplace. Then I realised it was the last day of January and only half the allotment beds are ready. I've managed to cut a couple of big beds for the potatoes and to get half of the raspberry bed sorted out. The overwintering onions and the acres of garlic are all going well.

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But that's about it. The trouble with trying to grow enough basics for the family is that my allotment is starting to look like a vegetable farm. Hopefully there'll be enough room in the garden to grow something other than spuds, alliums, sweetcorn and brassicas... Oh, and bindweed.

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Unusually for me and for the end of January, the greenhouse is full of growing things! I set up my new heated mat thing and, to my amazement, it works! Two days later my radishes and lettuces were through! OK, there's no sign of the leeks yet and I may have inadvertently baked the beetroot seeds in their modules ... but otherwise so far so good. All I need now is my new cloches...

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There's no sign of the aubergines/peppers/chillies in the propagator. But it's ok because one Wisteria and one Yucca have germinated on the kichen windowsill. I don't even know what a wisteria is ... can I eat it? And live??

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Talking about the probably inedible - I noticed the comfrey is starting to wake up and the grass is growing. The pears and quinces are almost in bud. Even my miserable cobnuts have a few catkins on them. Somebody tell Spring: 'I am not ready'.

The sweet peas are up (apart from Mollie Rilestone - which I've re-sown), the salad mixes have germinated in the cold and the onions (Long Florence), Bergamot and Chervil are showing too...

I've fixed my efforts on preparing the potato beds for some 100 plus seed potatoes. I'm cutting new beds, not least because the existing cultivated areas are being taken over by fruit: three new gooseberries (Hinnonmaki, Pax and Invicta) went in this week and the raspberries have arrived.

The aubergines and peppers have been sown and crammed into the propagator - with the heat cranked up accordingly. The forecast looks ominously wintry for the next week so I dusted off the little fan heater to keep the greenhouse frost free when they emerge...

Seeds are expensive. I've read this factoid a number of times regarding vegetable seeds.

But if just one of the 60 plus aubergine seeds I sowed this afternoon goes on to produce one decent plant and produces say 20 organic fruit, I estimate that - based on the equivalent cost of supermarket produce - the cost of the ten or so different packets of aubergine seed I have (recklessly) purchased is recouped at a stroke...

There is no allowance here for the cost of my time (ha!), compost, heat, light etc. but, by any measure, these costs can be factored out again thanks to the environmental savings engendered by home-produced fruit and veg.

Seeds are a steal...as long as you sow them...

After the domestic confinement that is Christmas, it's suprising how much brighter January feels than dull old December.

I reckon the new gardening year probably starts in October, and by any reckoning on 21 December...but there's no resisting the feeling that the completely arbitrary 1 January is a new start. And it is the first opportunity in wet, windy North Yorkshire to sensibly contemplate the glorious prospect of eventually planting things out. So, having puzzled over a leaking window seal and generally dusted the place down. I was ready to begin sowing in the greenhouse.

Space in the propagator is so limited. Therefore everything has to run in a particular order according to the preferences of the seedling plants after germination. Sweet peas need a cold , but not freezing, toddlerdom so they're first in...namely: Bijou Mixed, Cream Southbourne, T&M Prize Strain, Apricot Sprite, Fragrantissima, Mollie Rilestone And Pansy Lavender Flush. There's a real mix here - old and new, tall and short...they'll end up in amongst the climbing french beans or around the garden - even in the window boxes for the shortest ones. In an effort to shorten they're stay in the propagator I chipped a few of the seeds.

The remaining space was given over to a new onion (to me): Lunga di Firenze. Which should end up as a bigger, fatter spring onion. I'm aiming to find some allium which will be ready for harvest after the leeks are used up and before the overwintering onions are ready in June. So this is a kind of onion audition.

I also managed to squeeze in four strawberry Mignonette plants and a couple of chervils - both great for pots here and there in shady places. Fortunately all these sowings should co-exist happily at a gentle heat. Next up the Solanums (Solanae?) Aubergines and Chilli peppers...

Elsewhere in the greenhouse - the seeds which aren't fussed: broad bean Supersimonia and hardy brassicas: kohl rabi Olivia and vitamin greens, which are green and, no doubt, full of vitamins...I also tried planting some spring planting garlic, Solent Wight, into 3" pots. I don't think the pots are deep enough though to give the plants a useful headstart so I'll probably sow the rest direct.

I used some deep wooden boxes to sow a mixture of hardy salad - coriander, mustard, lambs lettuce (three sorts) and rocket Skyrocket - in the hopes that I can at least get some useful leaf salad in March. Looking around though, it was clear that I wasn't going to grow much at all if the greenhouse glass didn't get a wash. A horrible job on a cold(ish) windy day and it was alarming to
see that the inside of the windows were even less clean than the outside..! I did get the benefit of seeing geese overhead, getting into formation in the clear blue January sky, heading first west then veering off to the north.

Elsewhere in the garden, I planted two quince trees (Vranja and Meeches Prolific) in containers next to front door.

This month's sowing list:


FLOWERS

Sweet Pea Bijou Mixed
Sweet Pea Cream Southbourne
Sweet Pea T&M Prize Strain
Tree Ferns House & Garden Mixed
Wistaria Sinensis
Yucca Outdoor Mixed
Sweet Pea Apricot Sprite
Sweet Pea Fragrantissima
Sweet Pea Heirloom Mixed
Sweet Pea Mollie Rilestone
Sweet Pea Pansy Lavender Flush

HERBS

Bergamot Desert Jewel
Burning bush
Self Heal

SALAD LEAVES

Rocket Skyrocket
Salad All Season
Salad Baby Leaf
Salad Herb
Salad Niche Oriental

OTHER

Strawberry Mignonette

LEGUMES

Broad Bean Aquadulce
Broad Bean Supersimonia
Pea Feltham First
Pea Meteor

SOLANUM

Aubergine Black Beauty
Aubergine Fairy Tale
Aubergine Farmers Long
Aubergine Neon F1
Aubergine Ping Tung
Aubergine Red Egg
Chilli Pepper Beaver Dam
Chilli Pepper De Bresse
Chilli Pepper Fish
Chilli Pepper Friar's Hat
Pepper Shishitou
Pepper Tepin
Pepper Topepo Rosso
Pepper Trinidad Seasoning
Tomato Alicante
Tomato Buissonante
Tomato Rose de Berne

VALERIANACEAE

Lambs Lettuce Cavallo
Lambs Lettuce Louviers
Lambs Lettuce Trophy
Lambs Lettuce Verte de Cambrai

BRASSICAS

Mustard White
Senposai Greens No. 1
Kohl Rabi Olivia F1

ALLIUMS
Leek Einstein F1
Onion Ailsa Craig
Onion Giant Zitau
Onion Lunga di Firenze
Onion Napoleon F1
Onion Red Baron

UMBELLIFERAE

Chervil
Alexanders
Carrot Nantes Frubund
Bulbous Chervil

Everything, apart from the onions and nightshades, has been sown...some of them have even germinated.