Newbie veg grower needs help picking seeds !

Mehullakhani

Hi All

Just moved to a new house - with a garden ! Woohoo.

Trying to plan what to grow for the year to come, and my wife has made a list of what we use lots of, so makes sense to grow the following :

Tomatoes - cherry
Spinach
Courgettes
Sweet Peppers
Aubergine
Peas
French Beans
Okra - ( pushing my luck here , I guess ! )
Salad leaves

I have been scouring the usual weed providers, suttons, mr fothergills etc etc, and I am just getting more and more confused about what to buy.

I will be growing in either a small bed or large containers. The garden gets a moderate amount of light during the day, and I can find shaded areas if needed.

My biggest problem is that I am so confused about exactly which seeds to buy. Should I go for F1 plants, which seem to be sold as easier to grow ? I ideally want plants that produce heavy crops, and are quite disease resistant.

Anyone have any recommendations for the above vegetables, i.e. which specific variety of seeds to buy ? I am in your hands . . . . . . . .

Thanks

Mehul

nodwah

F1 seeds tend to be expensive and you often only get a few in the packet whereas older varieties you can get loads and loads of seeds that can last you a few years.

Things might depend on where you are in the country -?

i would have thought okra needs a hothouse in most areas.

What's your favourite types of tomatoes? I love Gardener's Delight - an old favourite cherry tom and I like Marmande as a beefsteak I would avoid Ailsa Craig, Alicante and Moneymaker - tasteless IMHO

For courgettes I think it's worth looking for mildew resistant types can't think of any names off the top of my head and I like to grow green ones and yellow ones for a change - but don't plant too many - one plant gives you loads and loads so that you'll be sick of courgettes by September!

Peas and beans - easy to grow in my experience, you don't need fancy varieties. French beans like warm weather so don't start them off til late spring.

Aubergines I've never had any luck with butwhere I am in Scotland is probably too cold and wet!

salad leaves - you can get different types to see you over the whole year with protection in the winter - usually quite easy to grow but need protection from slugs and snails - a lot!

Katyroo62

Hello. I hope I'm not breaking any rules by saying this but there is a River Cottage Handbook called 'Veg plot' which is brilliant. It's well worth getting out of the library and having a look through. He gives wonderful advice of grow what you like and grow what is expensive to buy (It sounds obvious but I did need telling!) and is full of wisdom and encouragement which takes the scaryness out of gardening such as... 'Plants want to grow, we just need to let them." It also tells you all of the basics and some of the not so basics in a really easy to understand way and takes a lot of the scaryness out of it.

I followed this advice and bought cheap seeds and cheap compost and was really pleased with the results. The book has got general advice on growing and then gives loads more information on specific veg and gives advice on what seeds to buy. I'm being a bit braver this year and with the help of the book organising my garden so that I can use crop rotation in the future!

Last year I also took advantage of some of the gardening magazine offers. I never normally buy gardening magazines as they are so expensive but some of them gave away loads of free seeds with some issues.

RAS

[QUOTE=Mehullakhani;discussion/2957342]Hi All

Just moved to a new house - with a garden ! Woohoo.

Trying to plan what to grow for the year to come, and my wife has made a list of what we use lots of, so makes sense to grow the following :

Tomatoes - cherry - do you have a green house?
Spinach - you might want to grow summer spinach, winter spinach, swiss chard and perpetual spinach. Sumer spinach bolts as soon as the weather gets hot. All can be grown as mini-leaves, cut and come again.
Courgettes - two plants will produce loads but take up a square metre each
Sweet Peppers - do you have a green house?
Aubergine - definately a greenhouse job
Peas - grow several varieties but they take room and are cheaper bought frozen as a rule.
French Beans - if you grow dwarf and a climber, you will have a longer season
Okra - ( pushing my luck here , I guess ! )
Salad leaves - can be grown from now all year round with a bit of shelter. Include lamb's lettuce, rocket and landcress which are hardy with beet and kale baby leaves.
I have been scouring the usual weed providers, suttons, mr fothergills etc etc, and I am just getting more and more confused about what to buy.

[/QUOTE]

Hi

F1 hybrids are produced for commercial growers who want 2000 cabbages that are ready to pick over one week. Do you? If not, then buy cheaper open polinated varieties.

if this is your first year, look at Lidls for cheap seeds - they do good salads, spinach, swiss chard (lucellus is the BEST), peas and french beans.

Check out square foot gardening.

cootambear

Mehullakhani wrote: »

Hi All

Just moved to a new house - with a garden ! Woohoo.

Trying to plan what to grow for the year to come, and my wife has made a list of what we use lots of, so makes sense to grow the following :

Tomatoes - cherry
Spinach
Courgettes
Sweet Peppers
Aubergine
Peas
French Beans
Okra - ( pushing my luck here , I guess ! )
Salad leaves

I have been scouring the usual weed providers, suttons, mr fothergills etc etc, and I am just getting more and more confused about what to buy.

I will be growing in either a small bed or large containers. The garden gets a moderate amount of light during the day, and I can find shaded areas if needed.

My biggest problem is that I am so confused about exactly which seeds to buy. Should I go for F1 plants, which seem to be sold as easier to grow ? I ideally want plants that produce heavy crops, and are quite disease resistant.

Anyone have any recommendations for the above vegetables, i.e. which specific variety of seeds to buy ? I am in your hands . . . . . . . .

Thanks

Mehul

how much for an ounce

cootambear

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2941314

LJM

i know some people may think im mad but i use ebay for some of my seeds there are a few good sellers on there plus i go round lidls/poundland etc the cost of top named brands i feel are high

gillian62

I second suggestion of Lidl seeds - I had great success last year, and very cheap.

Lettuce etc can be grown on a windowsill anytime, and grown on in pots indoors or in a tray for greens.

Tomato for indoors - micro tom which can be grown in pots on windowsill, only grows to about 12" tall.

SailorSam

Grow the unusual veg that would be expensive to buy if you went the shops.

tangojulie

If you just want a few plants of each you could do a lot worse than Poundland. Last year they had multi packs containing 6 different types of seed for £1 - eg tomato, courgette, aubergine, pepper, lettuce, cucumber might all be in one pack. They tend to be themed eg 6 things for salads, 6 things that are spicy, etc. They are such good value I often buy them even if I want only 2 or 3 of what's in them.

Think how many plants you'll want. As has been said, unless you want courgettes coming out of your ears, two plants will probably be enough. You'll be able to get one plant of two different varieties for pretty much the cost of a packet of seed. On the other hand you'll need a number of spinach plants so seed is a good idea.

And think of other options. My biggest success with salad leaves was buying a pack of 'living salad' from Waitrose and transplanting them - must have had 6 different varieties, 12 or more plants, lasted for months (in fact are still going in an unheated greenhouse) and all for £1.50 and no faffing about nursing seedlings.

ALIBOBSY

Definately start with the cheap seeds, Lidl are fab and Aldi/netto good as well, but lidl have the biggest range. Most of the pound type shops also have cheap seeds/bulbs/plants as well.

I tend to get the cheaper seeds then any specific vareties or rarer ones I will order from either an ebay seed store (forgot the name but got it saved on the other PC-got it from here lol), alan romans or garden by mail (who do some 20p seeds nice).

Get yourself a compost bin set up (loads of instructions on how to build yourself online or try your local council-first one is usually a free bin).
On your first year you don't have to worry about plot rotation, but you need to consider "areas" so you can have a sort of follow on plan year to year for rotation. Personnally I prefer salad leaves to heart lettuces like mixed cut and come again-and in pots means you can move them out of the direct sun when too hot (to avoid bolting) and under cover if too much rain as well as easier to stop slugs.

Its hard to get any tomatos before the blight hits unless you have a green house (unless you use bordeux mix).

I also recommend the river cottage book (but I have a load of their books anyway lol), got mine for £3 from the book people so its probably cheap somewhere-try first from the library.
Look around locally, like julie said sometimes supermarkets can be useful especially for small pots of herbs, but their plants can sometimes be a bit forced and "leggy". I found my local farm shop do some fab pots of herbs for about 30-50p a pot-plus most soft herbs can be grown from seed.

ali x