Starting pumpkins & cucumbers from seed & planting them

Beginning of Mai I started pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchini and melons from seed. I did not have space in the Tiny House, so I put them in the caravan. With the sun shining on the caravan we get 25°C during the day, which is good for germination with these types of plants. Only at night it gets colder, but apparently that did not matter. The seeds germinated well. Only when I put the plantlets outside underneath out greenhouse roof we got a storm with harsh winds. The cucumber plantlets where damaged and only one survived.

A few days later I hat sown the same outside. I did not have enough space inside to do all of the seeds and the wetter was so nice and warm that I wanted to try this out. I took an old gutter filled it with soil and put in all of these seeds I had left. I covered this with root barrier which is black and takes the heat of the sun. After that we first had bad wetter, but after a few days we had sunshine again and it did not take long for the seeds to germinate.

Unfortunately with all the rain we had, we had problems with slugs, even the, normally useful, tiger slugs ate my plantlets. I don’t really like it, but I did use slug pellets, so they will not eat all. In the meantime I have planted the plantlets that are still there.

The cucumbers in a raised bed, melons under the greenhouse roof, zucchini outside along the greenhouse and the pumpkins on the hill beds and in the hotbed where we had divided layer of hay.