Raising your own plants from seed always a joy
Raising your own plants from seed is a wonderful thing! When you think about it, the ability of an apparently lifeless, dry capsule to launch a delicate, green seedling forth in just a few days doesn’t fall far short of miraculous – it’s always a joy to watch however many years you’ve been sowing.
I grow all of my vegetables from seed each year, mainly because I love the process of seeing each plant from germination to harvest, but there are also several real advantages over buying young plants. For one thing, starting with seed is much cheaper – especially if you want to grow anything in quantity – and most seeds will remain viable for two or three years if stored in cool, dry conditions, so one packet can go a long way.
Growing from seed offers the widest choice of varieties, allowing you to have fun experimenting with what works best in your garden and kitchen. Sowing also gives you complete control over timings, so you sow at the right moment to suit your local climate, have plants ready when space becomes available and can make successional sowings for a longer harvest period.
Sow hardy vegetables like peas, broad beans, lettuce, radish, beetroot, carrots and kale during April to pick in late spring and summer. Beware of sowing or planting heat-loving crops like sweetcorn and courgettes outdoors too early, because damaging frosts are possible until the end of May. Sow them indoors or in a heated propagator in late April or early May to produce sturdy plants ready to go out in late May or early June. It’s not too late to sow tomato or cucumber plants on a warm windowsill and make sure these plants are potted on into progressively larger pots to give them the space they need to keep them growing strongly before they go out into the greenhouse whenever the weather warms up in May. Also remember to plant any remaining seed potatoes which have been chitting in an egg box and pull soil around the new shoots as they emerge (known as “earthing up”) to protect them from frost.
Why not try raising some hardy annual flowers from seed this month too, either sown directly outdoors or into modules undercover? These plants operate at speed – germinating, flowering, setting seed and dying all in a single growing season – and I’m keen to grow more of them because they’re brilliantly colourful and are often great sources of nectar for pollinating insects. Many also make lovely cut flowers into the bargain. Cornflowers, Calendula (pot marigolds), Orlaya grandiflora and bristly blue spires of Echium vulgare ‘Blue Bedder’ are favourites of mine, but there is an enormous range to provide the perfect boost of colour to your borders this year.
I’m keen to grow more brilliantly colourful hardy annual flowers