Shall we share our seed-sowing success (or failures!)?

dcurzon

i popped a few garlic cloves into a large tub (that also has pansies etc in) and a couple of them have popped up. 5 days

Primrose

One of my accidental successes has been a lovely purple Morning Glory (rather like a purple convulvulous). It's supposed to be an annual but last year it self seeded and despite all the freezing snow back in February I have lots of little seedlings peeking through the soil.

SAMHP_2

dcurzon wrote: »

i popped a few garlic cloves into a large tub (that also has pansies etc in) and a couple of them have popped up. 5 days

Wow - that's good - all that rubbish then about planting early and getting them frosted must be wrong - mind you, we have had a few frosts here this week

Having started this thread, I feel like I've slightly abandoned it - seem to spend all my time covering seed trays up, uncovering them, putting them outside, putting them back in the greenhouse, watering them, trying to find the name tags that seem to have mysteriously disappeared..... you know how it is!!
SAM

Sazbo

I've had good results with garlic cloves I stuck in soil recently, wasn't expecting anything tbh, but they came up in a few days. I know nothing about gardening really I only started this year, but I think I read somewhere that putting garlic out early when it's cold helps with good bulb formation... but I might be wrong... in fact I hope I am lol

Sam - I think a lot of us are busy at the mo doing the seed tray juggling thing, so don't worry:)

Saz xx

Primrose

Yes, I'm juggling seed trays in and out too. Have just watered some young tomato plants in pots on our patio table, but the wind got a bit chilly so decided to bring them inside and find I've dripped dirty water all across my cream carpet in the process !
My four courgette seeds seem to have rotted as I over-watered the compost and the same has happened to some of my climbing bean seeds in loo rolls so will have to resow them.

Dex

HeY all,

I've had further success with two of my potatoes emerald and vivaldi! - still waiting for the charlotte ones but they were potted up a good few weeks later, my rocket has come through too! which is the first thing planted directly in the garden to come up, still waiting on spinach, ss peas and mangetout.... thinking about planting some tomatilo seeds as they have just arrived but not sure if its a bit late now I just have to juggle where to put everything!!

Joolzr68

Hi everyone,

Thanks lotus-eater he did try the boiling water eventually and he's still staring at a pot of compost.Is it the type of parsley,he's trying the flat leaf? I havn't got the heart to tell him I used to sow the curly stuff straight in the ground and it always came up!.Oh bless he's swearing at it again.

Russetred, My Granny once told me "parsley only grows in a household where the woman wears the trousers", so maybe you need to sow it! :rotfl:

Back to the thread,

Successful germination so far,

Spring onion
Tomatoes, GuttenPearl, Sweet Olive, Sweet Million
Gherkin
Basil
Radish, French Breakfast
Sunflowers
Rocket
Red lettuce
Lettuce, little gem
Beetroot
Corriander
Carrots (sewn last autumn in a tub in the greenhouse, now bulking up nicely)
Hollyhock (given to me by my Mum 3 yrs ago!)
Sweetpeas (collected from a National trust garden last year, naughty I know, but I couldn't resist)

Things yet to germinate I hope,

Sweet William (old seed from 2 yrs ago)
Antirrhinum
Brussel Sprouts (one has just come up this morning)
Runner beans (saved from seed 2yrs ago)

Now all I need to do is chop down a rampant holly tree before my veggies need planting out because the veg beds are now too shady for them to thrive.

mardatha

I have failed utterly with heartsease. Out of a whole pkt of seeds in a tray on the windowsill I have 2 plants.

ema_o

Sowed my first seeds this year, am getting very excited so far

Lettuce & rocket - rocket was pretty quick and lettuce shoots eventually appeared a week or so later.
Pumpkin - out of 3 I thought nothing was happening when I noticed yesterday a small green shoot just poking out of the compost So excited!! No idea what to do next with it, but will find out via google before too long!

Also got 4 strawberry plants (not from seed) which I have managed to keep alive so far.

Failures
Blueberry plants from Lidl at £1.50 each - have planted these but they look mostly like brown twigs (still a bit of green but not much). Am thinking leaving them in the box for 4 weeks with no water was not the best plan... oops!

Davesnave

Some of my stuff has come up and some hasn't, but as I said earlier in the thread, that doesn't mean much if the things you sow normally take a year to germinate. I've forgotten exactly what I've sown in some cases, and they're 1/4 of a mile away, but here's what I can remember for now:

The quick stuff:
basil
rocket
parsley
coriander
land cress
courgettes
mixed lettuce etc are all fine. We're eating some of these in sarnies, but they are beating us now.

A few Lepechinia hastata are up. This is a rare salvia relative with a unique smell and maroon flower. My home -collected seed was dated 2005, so I thought I'd better use it, as all the plants perished in the cold winter. Insurance!

Then there's the 'mixed' seed I picked up while wandering around a sub-tropicalish garden. So far, just some 'alliums' have germinated out of that lot, which is odd, because I don't recall seeing alliums! Let's hope they are really exotics of some kind.

Also, some restios are.....er....resting. No sign, but I don't know anything about restios, yet.

A 'large-fruited hawthorn species,' the squashed berries of which I picked up from a pavement a few weeks back, has turned out to be a malus. Easy mistake to make. Anyway, some germinated in a week. That's fine, but I noticed the blossom on the parent tree was only around for about week, so the jury is still out on those.

Some Sea Buckthorn seeds harvested in a municipal car park are doing fine & will make lovely little bushes, if I remember to pinch them out.

And, as usual, my selected hellebore seed came up in abundance, which would be lovely, but I'm between gardens at the moment and the little dears take up so much room (and three years till you find out if they're any good!) Luckily, you can abuse them by keeping about 50 of them in one decent size pot for a year or so, but after that they need to be grown individually.

Jake's Gran, I just noticed you had verbena hastata on your list as a 'fail.' Those are the same as the astrantias and need a cold winter. I used to dig up seedlings from the garden, so never found this out till I bought some seed of a new colour. (Yes, I actually bought some seed!;))