Where and when to sow
QAs another growing season starts, I am as confused as ever about which flower seeds are best sown in pots and modules first, and which should be sown direct. The packets are no help as they usually give both as options. Please can you advise?
AThere are no rights and wrongs, but just decisions made according to soil conditions, weather, type of plant and how many are needed. I have many sowing sessions during the course of a year and set myself up with a potting tidy of good peat-free multi-purpose compost, and a selection of pots and containers of different sizes, including fibre pots and modules. For each packet of seed, I think about how we’ll use the plants and what they need. I very often talk to the seeds – they may not listen, but it helps concentrate the mind!
By now, I’ll have made autumn and winter sowings of hardy perennial seeds to pots or trays, and many, including coneflower (Echinacea pallida) are already showing. Sowings made in
February and March will be of hardy annuals such as Queen Anne’s lace (Ammi majus) and cornflowers to modules, or half-hardies like nicotiana to pots in warmth. An early start is worth making as this gives small seeds like antirrhinum time to develop, helps bring early colour to the garden and staggers the number of seedlings needing warmth, care and space at one time.
Our clay soil does not usually become workable until April or May, when at last we can create a tilth (fine crumbly surface) suitable for sowing. Then I will make direct sowings of robust plants with larger seeds.
Last year, we sowed some cosmos direct and some into containers, for pricking out singly to pots ready for planting. The direct sowings needed no other resources than seeds and were straightforward to thin, while the potgrown plants required more work but were easier to set out where we wanted them at good, wide spacings. There was no difference in the performance of the plants. Have fun deciding, and learn as you go on.