Sowing early in February

There must be people out there – somewhere – who positively relish the perils of winter. Eskimos come to mind. Not commonly counted among such supremely hardy types are we gardeners, who, like our favourite plants, tend to fall dormant when the thermometer drops below 10 degrees C (50 degrees F). At the moment, then, we're mostly waiting for the weather to perk up and when it does, no doubt, so shall we.

Having said as much, there's no need to spend the whole of February in a doze because (with apologies for the horrible pun) this is the month to steal a march. Outdoors may yet be frigid, but indoors it's already seed-sowing time.

A long answer would cover pages, so I'll stick with a fairly short one. It's late blight – the dreaded Phytopthera infestans, which all tomato-growing enthusiasts reading this will already know, and hate.

This may be true in general, but in my experience – on an allotment site where pests and diseases don't have far to travel – blight often strikes far earlier. Mid-August is normal. In such circumstances, you can just about get away with spuds, since they don't exactly ripen but simply get bigger, so you'll still get something even at this early stage of the harvest season. Not so with tomatoes, where you'll be very fortunate to have anything ripe, before wipe-out.

Once late blight arrives, there's nothing you can do. Various sprays available are prophylactic, i.e. they work by prevention. But it wouldn't be wise to rely on these alone, or on seed types advertised as *'blight resistant'; resistance being a relative concept and one about as useful, in this case, as saying the SS Titanic was built – which it was – to be resistant to icebergs. Thus, it's worth doing an indoor sowing, on the grounds that the sooner a tomato seed germinates, the sooner it will mature. Hopefully, before the blight arrives.

A windowsill that gets plenty of light, situated in a room as cool as possible is the best combination. Tomato seeds don't seem to have much bother germinating at coolish temperatures. If you can supply an extra light source, using grow lamps or similar, so much the better.

Early sowing, indoors or out, is ever a hazardous business, fraught with peril, and with success by no means guaranteed. But then, we shouldn't let those Eskimos have all the February fun, should we?

(NB: *'Blight-proof', as opposed to 'resistant', presumably awaits the attention of genetic modifiers, and it doesn't take much to imagine the row that'll break out in gardens up and down the land if they ever succeed!