A round up of what to do in your Food and Flowers Gardens

May has seen some beautiful weather, the Seed Pantry garden has been bathed in sunshine. However, we are now hoping for rain, a good soaking is just what the plants need! In the meantime we hope your plants have being sufficiently watered and fed too.

Over the last few weeks, we have been doing all we can to help in your gardens by bringing you weekly and monthly tips on what to do in your spaces.

Let’s continue! Here’s what you can do this month in your food and flower gardens 🏡

Flowers 🌼

🌅 As we move further into Spring and Summer is right around the corner, we can start planting Tender Summer Bulbs. As the frosts are most likely behind us, it is safe to start planting bulbs that are frost sensitive such as Gladioli, Dahlias and Bessera elegans. These can now be planted straight outdoors into pots, containers or borders.

🌷 Early Spring flowers will now be wilting and you can start deadheading by pruning spent flowers. Take garden shears and cut off the flower head from the lower stem once it’s finished flowering. Regularly deadheading your flowers will help channel the plant’s energy into creating new flowers rather than creating seeds, resulting in healthy plants and continual blooms.

🌺 Now that the sun is shining more, most of the garden is happily soaking up the rays. However, we imagine most people have areas of their growing space that are shadier and thus under used. These spaces can be enhanced by planting shade-loving plants such as Hostas, Astilbe and Digitalis.

🌻 From June we will be sowing seeds for biennials, and perennial plants that will flower next spring like Primula, Lupins and Foxgloves.

Now is also the time you can buy many other summer bulbs for planting, including Dahlia, Gladioli, Gloriosa, Tigridia, Anenome, Ranunculus and more…sign up to the Seed Pantry Grow Club for monthly boxes to choose.

Food 🥗

🍅Your Chillies, Tomatoes, and Sweet Peppers sown earlier in Spring can be potted on now, either into larger pots in greenhouses, indoors or outdoors in sheltered warm south facing positions.

Make sure to check the variety requirements of your plants though as the very hottest Chillies require warm temperatures of 25°plus to successfully grow, so these should be kept indoors or in a greenhouse.

🌽 There is still time to sow in small pots of courgettes, butternut, pumpkins, sweetcorn, french and runner beans and second sowings of peas and beans to give you a continual supply well into Autumn. Sowing direct in final growing positions is possible or start these in 9cm pots to grow seedlings for planting out later.

🥕 With the warm weather, vegetables are ready to grow outdoors. Beets, carrots and peas can now all be sown directly outside in veg patches.

🥔 Potatoes should be developing well and in May it is important to earth up/mulch potatoes in their patches and pots. Earthing up potatoes will help reduce late frost damage, encourage larger crops and also help prevent tubers from turning green. To do this mound up soil around your potato plants so no tubers are exposed.

🌱 Remember to keep up with Successional sowing of salads. If you sow seeds little and often in batches, it is possible to ensure plants are ready to harvest in succession throughout the growing season and most of the year. This can be done for carrots, salads, beans and more.

That is all, for now, folks – stay tuned to our Instagram account and we will have more tips and reminders next week! 😁

Seed Pantry

Planting For Food and Flower Gardens This Summer

It is a perfect time to grow food and flowers at home to enjoy your own glorious summer garden, so get out your Seed Pantry seeds and bulbs and start planting!

We want to do everything we can to help, so we’ll be bringing you weekly/monthly tips on what to do, just stay tuned to our Instagram account and this blog!

Here’s what you can do this month in your food and flower gardens 🏡

Flowers 🌼

💐 Now is a great time to start potting up Dahlia tubers. Doing this will help them get a head start and flower sooner for you. Keep frost-free in pots and  plant them out in May where you want them to flower. We have a whole range of dahlias available right now in the Grow Club so come and have a look!

Check out our ‘How to plant and grow Dahlias‘ blog to find out more!

💐 There is still time to sow sweet pea seeds too! Start them in 9cm pots with up to 3 seeds per pot and they will germinate in a few weeks! To help growth, it can be beneficial to pinch out sweet pea grow tips at about 15cm tall. This encourages strong side-branching for flowering.

Now is also the time to buy many other summer bulbs for planting, including Begonias, Nerines, Gladioli, Crocosmia, Tigridia, Anenome, Ranunculus and more…sign up to the Seed Pantry Grow Club for monthly boxes to choose.

Food 🥗

The time is now to start your veg patch and sowing food seeds indoors. You can sow these seeds now on your windowsills to get them started!

🥗 Fruiting vegetables can be started in mini propagators such as tomatoes, peppers, chillies, aubergines. Once these geminate and are around 4 weeks old, they can be potted on into 9cm pots, and then at 15cm tall plant into final positions.

For beetroot, chard, broad beans, peas, leeks, kale and sprouting broccoli, these should be started in trays for planting outside in May.

Need some more help getting started!? Check out our blog ‘How to start growing your own vegetables’ for more!

🥗 For leafy greens, spring onions, pak choi, mustards and mizuna,  you can start sowing these into trays for planting outside later also.

We have another blog helping with these too! Check out ‘Growing Fresh Leafy Green Salads’ for more!

🌿 For herbs like basil, parsley, coriander, chives, these can be started in pots or mini propagators on your windowsills now too. It’s great to have fresh ingredients in arms reach!

Need a hand choosing what herbs to grow? We have a list of our favourites here ‘Top 10 best herbs to start growing’

That is all, for now, folks – stay tuned to our Instagram account and we will have some more tips and reminders next week! 😁

Seed Pantry

No garden space is complete without the addition of delicious fresh leafy greens. From lettuce to kale, leafy greens come in all colours, shapes, sizes, textures and flavours. They enjoy the cooler early Spring season and so now is the perfect time to grow them!  This is why healthy salads are a key theme in this month’s Seed Pantry Grow Club boxes.

Leafy Greens couldn’t be easier to start growing too! Most can even be grown indoors or outdoors, in small spaces too, so they are perfect for your kitchen gardener no matter what size space you have!

Let’s run through a quick guide on how you can start growing your own healthy Leafy Green Salads!

1) The best way to start your Leafy Greens is indoors now (March). This will avoid any bad weather or late frosts that can kill or damage the plants. Use trays/small pots or composts discs to start the seedlings off.

2) Sow seeds or scatter over a tray with about 8-10cm depth of compost. Sow seeds at around 1cm deep or you can simply add a 1cm layer compost on top of the seeds if easier. Gently water the soil until moist but not too wet (you don’t want to dislodge the seeds with a great torrent!). You can water the base layer first and just add a little to the top 1cm layer after. 

3)  It should take around 7-14 days for the seeds to germinate. After a further 15 days, you can thin the seedlings by removing some of the plants if they are too tightly packed together, this helps remaining plants grow bigger to their full size (you can check spacing guides on seed packets).  Or you can leave them tightly packed for baby leaf salads. After a total of 30-50 days, most leafy greens should be ready to harvest! Fresh crops for the kitchen table!!

4) For lettuce plants, you can cut the leaves you want for a meal, around 2.5cm above the base of the plants with scissors or a sharp knife. Your plants will grow more leaves for you 2 or 3 times. This is known as cut-and-come-again.

From mid-April, you will also be able to sow directly outside into patches or containers. Follow the same steps for indoor planting and they should also germinate in 7-14 days and be ready to harvest from 30 days!

So as you can see, it really is not that hard! Now the question is, what leafy greens should you start planting?! Probably the best place to start would be with lettuce , spinach and rocket as they are an easy and tasty way to start out. From there you can move on to kale, chard, and even oriental style leafy greens!

We have a whole range in the Grow Club this month, so come check them out and start your journey unto the leafy green world! 😁

Seed Pantry Team

The delights of the Dahlia season are back at Seed Pantry! We cannot be more excited to get these planted. If you need a hand getting your Dahlias started from the Grow Club, here is our grow guide!

When the last frosts are behind us you can go for planting them directly outside in final growing positions – borders or large containers (40cm+ wide). If you plant them early in March, this will help them get a head start and growing, do this in pots around 3 litres in size and keep them frost-free by placing undercover or protected outside. 

How to plant and grow dahlias

1. Generally starting dahlias early should go in containers that you keep frost-free, then plant them out in final positions around mid-May.  Or from May plant them directly where you want them.

2. Plant dahlias with each bunch of tubers generally spread out a little and lying horizontally around 12cm deep, if it’s a tight bunch of tubers simply pop them in at the required depth. Then loosely add general potting compost. You mix in a few handfuls of sand/grit to help with drainage.

3. Cover the tubers, add a splash of water and wait for the magic to happen! Position early plantings outdoors in a frost-free area.  Transplant the early plantings in May to final growing positions in borders or containers.

4. Dahlias can be tall plants with large flowers, at 1m+, some support or stakes may be needed to avoid them toppling over. They need watering regularly during dry summers, every 2/3 days. You can also add a liquid fertiliser every 2 weeks for top-notch flowers that keep on blooming all summer (tomato feed).

Seed Pantry Team

A good spud, nothing quite beats it, a staple food appearing on dinner plates across the land! We can’t wait to grow potatoes this year! Luckily they are in the Grow Club this month! But how do you get them started?!

We have put together this guide to help you to grow your own potatoes!

What is Chitting I hear you say!? First of all, once you have bought your seed potatoes (it’s best to buy them so you know what you are growing and that they are disease-free)  you can start chitting them on your window sills. Chitting is the process of getting your seed potatoes to sprout before planting them. While it is not absolutely necessary to grow your potatoes, it does help them develop quicker once planted, it will speed up the sprouting process by giving them plenty of light and warmth resulting in an earlier and slightly better harvest.

1)  To start chitting your potatoes, we recommend putting them into egg boxes with the rose end facing upwards.

Place the egg box onto a windowsill indoors where they will get plenty of light and also are kept warm and dry.

2)  Wait till the potatoes start to grow green shoots while hopefully the weather gets warmer and the frosts come to an end.  After this, you will be able to start planting the potatoes.

3)  Now we can plant the potatoes!  Spread 15cm of potting compost to the bottom of a container. Evenly space 3 or 4 (max) seed potatoes with their green shoots facing upwards. After this, cover the seed potatoes with another 15cm layer of compost.

4) When the foliage shows through the compost, allow it to grow to around 20cm high, then cover with another 15cm of compost leaving 5cm showing. (Repeat until the container is full.)

5) Potatoes in bags and containers require plenty of water particularly during dry weather so make sure to keep the soil moist and water regularly.  You can add a general liquid feed once a week to boost production.

Time to harvest

From June you can begin to harvest your tasty potatoes. A good way to see that your potatoes are ready to harvest is to look out for signs from the foliage. For the early crops,  wait until flowers grow and then drop off before harvesting. For main crops, wait until the foliage starts to yellow. Once this happens, cut the foliage back and wait a few more days before harvesting.

Seed Potatoes planted during March/April.

• 1^st early crops take 10-14 weeks – harvest from June onwards.
• 2^nd early crops take 14-16 weeks – harvest from late June onwards.
• Main crop take 16-22 weeks – harvest from July to October.
• Salads potatoes treat as 2^nd early types.

We have a range of quality seed potatoes at Seed Pantry, so come check them out and get some spuds growing at your home too!

Enjoy 🙂

Seed Pantry Team

Winter appears as the season where the garden is bare, dead even! however, under the surface, everything is slowly coming alive! Over the last week, it feels like Spring is right around the corner! 🌱

We are in the South so maybe we are further on down here? We have snowdrops and cyclamens in flower with crocus just about to flower too, given a bit of sunshine!

From the planting I have been doing in Autumn we also have narcissus and the green shoots of allium flowers popping up too!

#Spring is coming 😀

Neil

Seed Pantry Team