SOW SUMMER BEDDING FROM SEED
Save money and grow your own for baskets and bedding
BEDDING plants are a must-have if you want to create the kind of summer hanging baskets or colourful containers that are guaranteed to turn heads. Most people wait until mid-spring to snap up plants from the garden centre, but there’s another option available – growing some of your own specimens from seed.
Apart from saving you a lot of money when compared to buying ready-grown, larger plants later in the season, raising your own plants from scratch has other benefits. You will be able to grow some varieties that are not readily available and it’s rewarding to see displays of plants you have nurtured from the start.
If you are dyed-in-the-wool ‘ready grown’ plant buyer you might be put off by thinking that growing from seed is hard work. Well, it certainly requires some commitment, but raising these stars of summer from seed is much easier than you might think, even if your propagation skills are still developing.
The great news is that you don’t even really need any specialist equipment. A few pots or trays, some seed compost, labels and a propagator are all you need to get going. It’s a great boon if you have a heated greenhouse fitted with benches to raise plants, but it’s not essential, as a few window ledges indoors will do just as well.
All sorts of colourful plants suitable for baskets and pots can be grown from seed, from trailing stalwarts, such as nasturtiums, lobelia and several petunias, to bushy, foliage plants like coleus, Cineraria maritima and
Helichrysum ‘Silver Mist’, along with flowering gap fillers, such as French marigolds, pansies and impatiens.
Annual dahlias, New Guinea impatiens and dwarf cosmos are perfect for providing a focal point or height. And no summer containers would be complete without pelargoniums. There are plenty of different ones that can be raised from seed, although they are expensive – it can cost £5 for just six seeds, depending on the variety.
Not all bedding plants are a doddle to grow from seed. For example, the seeds of begonias are so small they are difficult to see with the naked eye, and even experienced gardeners find them tricky to handle. In my opinion, it’s best to raise these summer stalwarts from plugs or buy larger young plants.
Also, remember that not all bedding and basket lines are available to grow from seed. Many popular varieties, such as Petunia Night Sky, fuchsia cultivars and many types of calibrachoa, are generally raised from cuttings, so are only sold as plugs or so-called garden ready plants.
Most bedding plants will need to be sown at some point between January and April. Bear in mind that some plants grow more slowly than others, so planning is required to ensure that all are ready for planting up at around the same time. For example, it’s best to sow pelargoniums early as they can take up to four months to reach flowering size.
The seeds of bedding plants will need different depths and spacings, depending on the plant, but the process of sowing is more or less the same. Fill a 3in (7½cm) pot with seed compost, level and tap to settle. Lightly firm with the bottom of another pot, then scatter seeds thinly on top.
Cover seeds with a fine layer of vermiculite or sieved compost, water
and add a label. Seeds will germinate readily if you place the pot inside a heated windowsill propagator. These devices are great if you intend to sow a lot of seeds, but if you don’t have one, slip a clear plastic freezer bag over the top of the pot, secure with a rubber band and put on a windowsill.
When shoots appear, remove the pots from the propagator – the time will vary depending on the variety. Once the seedlings are well developed with a good root system, decant the rootball and loosen the compost, carefully separating the seedlings. Place each seedling into a small pot filled with multi-purpose compost.
Keep the compost moist and move the plants into larger pots if required. When the plants are about six weeks old feed weekly with liquid feed. Remember that bedding plants are sensitive to frost and have to be kept under cover until late May or early June.