Home sown seedlings (lighthearted)

[hohohowheniscmascoming]

I was feeling really pleased with myself for my little cosmos seedlings. They are a tiny bit leggy so will repot. I don't have a greenhouse.

Then yesterday I went to a nursery garden centre and they had 6 or 8 cosmos seedlings that were so thick stemmed and bushy they were like little trees for about £4. And honestly I thought "why do I bother?!"

But anyway I will nurture my little ones. I know they will grow I've done them before but I have seedlings envy/inadequacy

I grew sweet peas in the propagator took months. Planted them out and realised they needed bulking out so I bought a tray of sturdy plants for £4. Same variety.It really wasn't worth bothering with. I also have a self sown sweet pea from last year which is actually in bloom!

I love sowing from seed, in fact I much prefer it to planting things out 😂 I have a little wooden Aldi greenhouse and a plastic one, and cosset my seedlings through early life. Of course some don't make it and there are many I don't bother growing as the garden centres do it better (lobelia, petunias, pansies), but I love the process. I currently have cosmos, zinnias and sunflowers on the go.

I completely agree the peat-free compost makes it difficult. My favourite for seed sowing is Westland seed compost with added John Innes. I used some RocketGro this year because I had a discount code, and everything either died or struggled and hasn't really recovered despite being potted on 🙄

I bought cosmos last year as mine all got eaten, and they were rubbish - flowered madly until August then died. Mine are slow to get going but will just grow and grow and will flower until October. Self-seeding cosmos isn't an option in my garden, it's damp and sluggy and the seedlings would be eaten as soon as they came up!

My favourite thing to do is grow autumn-started seeds - they give me hope over winter. My winter depression has been significantly improved by having seeds to tend. I sow sweet peas, larkspur, snapdragons and poppies most years, plus a few new things - I did corncockle this year and they've been fantastic. All my autumn-sown seeds are flowering now and making me very happy.

I prefer the seedling stage too, I am lucky to have a greenhouse and the first thing I do every morning in spring is to take a cuppa out there and see how they are doing, water them etc. I don't enjoy planting out and miss seeing them every morning (mine mainly go to my allotment rather than garden). I'm also using Westland seed (for sowing) and multi-purpose (for potting on) this year and it is the best peat-free I've found so far.

I need to try more autumn sown seeds, I've not got in the habit of doing that and I agree it'd be nice to have plants to tend in the darker months. I use one of those big plastic trays meant for cleaning oven shelves next to the patio window for early spring sowings indoors plus I've got a growhouse (basically a tall coldframe).

@EasilyDefined I would love a proper greenhouse, lucky you! That will be a priority if we ever move house. I have a potting shed but it's under trees, no good for growing things.

I also take a cuppa out to check on my seedlings every morning 😁

@ErrolTheDragon You'd be able to grow over winter in the grow house, so long as it's in a bright spot. You just need to protect them from frosts with frost fleece, and maybe a blanket over the top on the very coldest nights.

Do the garden centres all grow in peat based compost? Is that why their plants are doing so well?
So if we stop buying seed and just buy plants - are we back in the zone of being responsible for destroying peat bogs and contributing to climate change?

This bothers me 😞

I do have a superabundance of lychnis coronaria seedlings started last year in the growhouse. It's a bit feast or famine with some seeds!

My seedlings this year have been terrible, all my marigolds have been eaten by slugs/snails, none of my sweet peas came up (no idea why not), cosmos are leggy and most of the sunflowers have been eaten.

I think the cold wet spring is to blame maybe 🤔

You've given me hope for next winter's seemingly inevitable depression. Pots of seedlings in the conservatory might make it worth getting up in the morning.

Every year I grow something a bit different from seed...doesn't always work but this year is ping pong. So far it's growing well!

Scattered some calendula seeds, excellent self seeders, straight on the flower bed when I first moved in. Slugs and snails ignore them and still going strong 40 years later.

Most of what I’ve bought recently seems to be in peat-free. Behaves differently. But professional gardeners are fighting back against the ban, so although some nurseries advertise themselves as peat-free, the ones that don’t probably are using peat.

That’s the heads after the seeds have departed. It demonstrates really well that the flower head is made up of lots of tiny little flowers, just as all the flowers in the daisy family are. We’re often told double flowers are bad for pollinators, because the “business parts” of the flowers have been repurposed as petals. But although scabious looks double, it’s actually many flowers in one head, and is usually covered with bees.

Snails go in our green bin with the garden waste. Lots of food and a trip in a bin wagon at some point.

My self seeded California poppies and calendula always seem to appear much later than on other people's plots at the allotment site but they always turn up in the end. I am already hoeing away hundreds of borage seedlings (I leave a few).

My latest experiment is potting on some melon seedlings I found in my compost bin, I doubt very much I'll get melons unless there's a dramatic change in the weather but you never know. I had a good cucumber crop on the plot last year.

This is my first year having vegetable raised beds and it has been hard so far!

• some of the stuff I started growing indoor from seeds was horribly leggy
• had slugs eating a lot of my crops so had to buy some organic anti-slug product to help
• Had to put better mesh because something (rabbit? mice? fox) managed to get through and ate a lot of my crops...

It is never ending really.

At least I have had a few things do well like rhubarb, mint, tomatoes and herbs but it is a constant learning process and the garden pests won't defeat me!

I love growing from seed but this year and last year have been incredibly demoralising. My seedlings are very wimpy and wispy.

I’m also sceptical about peat free compost for seedlings, it just dries out too quickly, but I do think it’s mainly down to the weather.

It’s the first of June on Saturday and it feels like we’ve had about 5 days of sunshine! Everything else in my garden is late too. That’s before you get onto the biblical plague of slugs, thanks to all the rain.

I’ve had extra difficulties because we’ve had builders in since last summer, so my sowing schedule was disturbed as I couldn’t get to my window sills. But I’ve just got a greenhouse and will be starting afresh with autumn sowing, and hope for a better year next year!

I'm overrun with foxgloves, astrantia, verbena bonariensis, scabious and erigeron. I'm practically begging friends to take them off me, they're all from seeds I collected in my garden last autumn - its the first time Ive done it and I've loved it and found it so satisfying but had no idea how many plants I'd end up with!

I don't ever remember seeing a plant label saying 'grown in peat-free compost'.

I'll start taking notice now. I suspect loads don't - like all the cheap geraniums I just bought in Aldi 😐

balzamico.. can you donate some seedlings to local charity shops?.. always go well here..

for any plant you buy at a garden centre up to 100s have been weeded out to get to that stage.
plus they havd the ideal growing conditions and pest control.

@hohohowheniscmascoming - don't worry, within a few weeks of being planted ot your sedlings will be the same lovely robust plants as the ones you can buy now.

Are you potting them on? If they are still in seed plugs, their root growth will have been constrained so they aren't able to put a growth spurt on. The ones I potted on are twice the size of the seed tray ones (I ran out of pots) and the ones planted out are twice as big again.

@Startingagainandagain Thing go leggy when they’re not getting enough light. Unavoidable to some extent in UK. When you pot them on, a lot of things you can bury deeper.

Slugs have been particularly bad this year.

They tend to put it on their websites in the “about us” section.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/peat/peat-free-nurseries I don’t expect this list is exhaustive

@TonTonMacoute Have you tried putting a lid over your seedlings, or a layer of gravel over the soil?