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Friday, March 6, 2009

Growing from Seed

A couple of people have pointed out in emails that I haven’t ever covered the basics of growing plants from seed and of course, we all have to start somewhere! If you were lucky, doting parents gave you a packet of seeds when you were a tot and you got the bug to garden almost before you could walk and talk, but if not, don’t despair, it’s very easy.

Hygiene is actually the most important part of seed germination – if your pots and trays are clean and well ventilated and your growth medium is sterile, you should be fine. There are loads of ways to sterilise pots and trays that have been used before, but I use the sterilising tablets that you get for baby’s bottles and plunge my pots etc in a huge bucket of hot water with the tablets dissolved in it. That guarantees no lingering disease or bacterium can be hanging around waiting for a chance to wipe out my plantlings.

There are four basic kinds of seed - annuals are sown, flower and are removed from the garden all in one year (although clever people sow annuals in the autumn and carry them through the winter with some weather protection so they start earlier in the next year), biennials are sown in one summer but produce in the following one, perennials are sown once and should be around for years and years and half-hardy annuals can be sown either in winter or early spring but require physical protection such as being indoors or in a greenhouse until the frost risk is past.

I use a mixture of John Innes #2 and ordinary (sterilised) potting compost for all my seeds. John Innes is great for starting seeds, but rather expensive, and potting compost is cheaper but gives less good germination, so I mix them 50/50.

You can find out how to grow almost any plant from a good gardening book, or – when all else fails, plant half the seeds on the surface, half their own depth under soil cover and hope for the best! This is the route I use when somebody gives me seeds and can’t remember what the plant is they came from. If I can’t identify them myself, the half under, half on top method will usually get something to germinate.

Labels: autumn seeds, germinating seeds, growing from seed

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:17 AM

2 Comments:

At March 17, 2009 9:00 AM , The Garden Farmer said...: I wish I’d found your blog sooner! It’s taken me years to successfully grow plants from seed.

Just one quick question... If you are planting directly into the soil, would you recommend covering the soil first with polythene plastic to warm it up for sowing?

I’ve done this once, and the results were better – but I’m not sure if that was just luck or not... what do you think?
At March 19, 2009 10:57 AM , The All Seasons Gardener said...: Yes I would - there are no seeds that I can think of that don't benefit from going into a warmed soil. Even the ones that require some form of stratification, like being chilled, still do better if the soil is warmer - it has less to do with temperature and more to do with 'friability'; colder soils tend to be both wetter and more solid, which means the plant has to work harder to get those roots out of the seed, and is at greater risk of developing rot or being infected with mildew spores that have been waiting in the soil.

There are a number of ways to warm soil: black plastic or polythene, glass or plastic cloches, horticultural fleece and even making 'hot' beds with manure - the hot bed method isn't advisable for seeds though, as it can kill them as fast as they germinate! It's great for crops like rhubarb and asparagus that you want to bring on early.