Total newbie, please help! All advice welcome

[Goostacean]

I just got those little freebie seedling packs from M&S, and we’ve followed the instructions for planting them in the little cardboard boxes they came with. I’ve got beetroot, forget me nots, chilli pepper, lettuce, parsley and radish.

What can I do to make them big and healthy and successful? Trying to keep my toddler entertained (accepting that it’s a very long term plan!) but don’t have the foggiest. I need to replant the seedlings in 10ish days time. How? Where? Please help!

They'll all be fairly small, so plant them singly into small flower pots (yogurt pots with a hole in the bottom, home made newspaper pots etc). Use the best soil you can find, potting compost if you can get to the shops or online.

The first leaves each plant produces will be a pair of fleshy "seed leaves", this will be followed by true leaves. If you have one plant per box, you simply up-end it, squeeze the box slightly to loosen the plant, put a layer of soil into the pot, then the plant, then fill the gaps between plant and pot with soil, and firm it down gently. Give it a bit of a water.

If you've got several seedlings in each box, you'll need to separate them. Hold them by their true leaves (never by the stem which will snap) and gently pull, shake, tease them apart and pot up.

Once the plants are large enough to hold their own, most can be planted into the garden at about 6 inches apart. Plant out the radishes and beetroot when they're quite small, the rest when they're outgrowing the small pots. Chilli and parsley can be successfully grown in a larger pot on the windowsill.

You won't get 100% success. Key to being a good gardener is to watch what's happening and think about it, so you know what to try next time. No instructions are going to be totally accurate for your particular garden.

I’ve got beetroot, forget me nots, chilli pepper, lettuce, parsley and radish

To add to the good advice above, you want to sow a few more beetroot and radish seeds every two weeks or so if you want a regular supply of these, don’t forget the leaves are edible and delicious too.

Forget me nots are biennial, first year will only be leaves.
You won’t get flowers until next year then it will die though it usually drops seeds and grows new baby plants.

Water forget me not is much better IMO, it flowers every year though you’ll need a permanently boggy, water logged spot for it.

Chilli peppers are perennial if kept out of frost, bring it in the house before the frosts come.

Your lettuce needs to go somewhere cooler and lightly shady in the garden, put it in hot full sun and it’ll send up huge spikes of flowers in no time!

Don’t bother with parsley seed.
Honestly, I have never been able to get it to germinate and grow well, it’s very unreliable.
Parsley is better bought as a plant.
It’s a biennial so will flower next year then die.

Also, surrounding your lettuces with tea bags and coffee grounds and crushed eggshell can protect against slugs who really love lettuce

MereDintofPandiculation
Wished I'd had your advice before transplanting some 'plugs' into a tray - one or two were beheaded from their roots!

I'm hoping to get in to gardening over the next few months - Corona has won where my parents failed.

@ajandjjmum that's by far the best way to learn - do it wrong and see what the consequences are

Thanks for all the tips! We don’t have a garden sadly... will they be okay in pots?

I’m so excited, the lettuce and radishes have germinated!

Yes, they'll all be OK in pots. Try and get hold of some really big containers. The beetroot need a lot of space, 6inches between plants, and quite some depth. Radishes can be closer but still need reasonable depth. Leuttuce - try and keep slightly cooler, not in full sun. If you're not getting results, you can eat young beetroot lieaves in salad, or cook them like spinach, and you can let the radish seed and eat the pods. You may not get a full hearted lettuce - suggest you harvest by pulling a few leaves at a time and leaving the plant to grow.

Chili does well in a 6 inch pot, very suited to windowsill growing. Parsley is also OK in a pot, and you can get away with a half height pot. I've not grown forget-me-nots deliberately in a pot, but the ones that have appeared as "weeds" in other pots have done nicely.

Your main problem will be greenfly. Be vigilant, squash them as soon as you see them. If they get out of control, try washing them off under a tap, then spraying with water with a tiny bit of washing up liquid.