2021 What I sowed today

Re-sowed  chillies (hot lemon, ancho, fatalii yellow, serrano, habenero maya, cayenne - what a depressing list of failures!) and peppers (long red marconi, asti red, californian gold).
Sowed cabbage earliest of all.

I sowed freebie pepper seeds Long Red Marconi on 24 Jan, had given up and just ignored them,  they have only just popped.  Having given up I sowed 3 more on the surface of a different pot of compost as some pepper instructions say dont exclude light, no show.  I even put some to chit in the airing cupboard on 12 Feb but as yet no sign of life.  Either Long Red Marconi have  temperamental germination or it was a duff pkt.  I might end up with more than necessary.

Last year I had real problems getting Long Red Marconi to germinate. It was a free packet from GrowSeed. Think one out of about twenty seeds came up, so the rest of the packet got chucked into a garden border. Some pepper seeds just seem to be really stubborn, I've got three varieties of sweet pepper refusing to germinate, not old seed and the supplier maintains they have a good germination rate.

Are Long Red Marconi  a particularly nice pepper?  I only sowed to have an alternative to orange bell peppers that came up prolifically.