Is it soon to sow seeds (indoors)?

[SparklyRainbowDinosaur]

Hi,

I'm a bit of an amateur gardener (tomatoes and herbs have been my limit previously!) but we've made a bit more planting space in our garden this year and I've got lots of seeds to get sowing. Flowers mainly, things like sweetpeas, Zinnia, sunflowers, cosmos etc.

I'm itching to get going and have bought a seed tray with a light and heat mat to start them off, but I keep thinking i should wait? The seed packets have quite a wide range (Feb-apr/may) to sow indoors but it feels unseasonably cold and miserable here in the SW (England) and I don't want to end up with lots of seedings that can't be transplanted!

Am I overthinking it? Should I just get going? Please help!

It's not too early, I've put some out in my green house thing this week. But it sounds like you are going to do what I did last year and get carried away with tiny seedling pots and loads of them. What happened was it went really cold and I had them growing all over the house, and we went away for a weekend and we had a random heat wave then and they nearly all dried out and died 😂. This year I am being less careful with indoor sowing, and not bothering with the tiny seed trays because you have a really short window to transfer them to bigger pots. My more experienced and less organised (like me) friends advise me to be more of a guerilla gardener and just ignore the packet instructions and plant things when and where. It's true that you can follow everything by the letter and it's hit or miss, and you can just shove seeds in pots outside at the wrong time and the still grow, so I'm going to do a mix this year.

I'm planning on planting some sweet pea seeds tomorrow. South facing bedroom window sill. I plant them in those tall, narrow plastic tubs you get buttermilk in. Might start some tomato and tomatillo seeds too.

I've sown sweet peas, tomato, courgette, Antirrhinum, and some other bits. Sown last week indoors and today placed in greenhouse. I did similar last year with no problem

I’d sow the sweet peas and the tomatoes and leave the rest to end March. You’re nit overthinking it. Straggly seedlings that you haven’t been able to plant out won’t do as well as later sown seedlings planted out at just the right time

Sweet peas are quite tough and can be planted out a bit earlier, tomatoes can be potted up and grown on a windowsill for quite a time