Growing from seeds

Ok, this is my first attempt at growing from seeds. I’ve read up on germination and stratification and all sorts of general tips on growing from seeds… so I should be fine right? Dragged Dan out again earlier today to buy the seeds (it’s a rainy day and I was garden-eager but couldn’t do anything outside today, damn rain), so we went in search of Haskin’s near Ferndown. It’s a nice garden centre, quite big (not as big as Cadbury’s near Bristol) and has a good variety of plants, bulbs, seeds and garden tools. After being very tempted to just spend the extra money and buy the already grown plants we wandered over to the seed section. Firstly, are seed sections always terribly un-organised? Why don’t they just put them in sections, Annuals in one, Perrenials in another and then maybe alphabetically? Oh well…

So we rumaged through the different seeds, seeing which ones we could plant now and give me sprouts before I got bored and dumped them in the bin. We came home with four different seed packets and the ‘Mega value budget propagation 3-pack’, oh yes, no expense spared here! The seed packages consist of Campanula (a mix of blue and white rockery plants), Achillea ‘Summer Berries’ hybrid, perennial sweet pea and some lupin ‘gallery mix’ seeds. I found myself a nice dry bit of ground under the porch to sit on and set about putting the compost in the propagator and then planting the Campanula and the Achillea seeds, the other two flower seeds have to be soaked in warm water overnight before being sowed apparently. I’m now thinking, yet again, that someone should really create some sort of microwavable plant. Put your seeds in and 30 seconds later, whala, big thick plant with gorgeous flowers… would be nice for someone as impatient as me…

Here are the seeds as they are now. Sitting happily in the windowsill, in a propagator (I took the plastic lid off for the picture) to keep the moisture in. I expect I’ll be happier with the Campanula mix as it takes 14-28 days to germinate while the Achillea can take 1-3 months. I’ll be checking them everyday to make sure the compost is moist but not wet, using a spray bottle to keep from drowning them and in turn causing them to mold.