Seed Pantry Blog

Behold the raw power of ✨💚 Peas and Beans 💚✨

Peas (Pisum sativum) and beans, from borlotti to haricot, they come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, colours and flavours! ✨
Peas and beans are universally consumed around the world as a major food source rich in fibre and protein. 🌍

Peas are a great source of Folic Acid which acts by helping the body produce and maintain new cells! Beans on the other hand are amazing sources of protein and fibre, the later being very important for our digestive health. –
They are so easy to grow at home in garden spaces or in containers – start sowing seeds in March for peas, followed by beans from May. 🌱

🌟 Special Power – Protein 🌟

Peas & beans are amazing sources of protein. A 100g portion of chickpeas can attribute to nearly 40% of your recommended daily protein intake. The combination of good land use, high yield and an excellent protein source, makes Peas and Beans one of the most environmentally friendly crops to grow.🌏

We have some great peas and beans coming up in the next few months in the Grow Club 🌱
For now, we have some great peas available right now in our Seeds and Bulbs Store! 😍

Seed Pantry

 

 

This week we had a field trip to @HelloFresh to have a look at how we refresh their garden! We designed and developed the planting in the garden area originally, so with Spring and Summer right around the corner, we went in to do the spruce up planning! 👨🏽‍🌾

Over the next few weeks we will be taking the time to tidy up and plant some wonderful climbers, flowers/colour enhancers, evergreens, hanging gardens and more….so soon we will have it all to show you! 😁

Keep an eye out for our updates on how it is all going! 👀🌱

Seed Pantry

We’re celebrating the power of ✨🍅 Tomatoes 🍅✨

Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) come in all shapes and sizes, from cherry tomatoes to beefsteaks. The ultimate fresh fruit/veg! companion, and the vibrant colour providers in any salad and cooked dish.

This classic fruit provides great nutritional value, with around 5 cherry tomatoes containing a quarter of the Vitamin A and C recommended per day!.

🌟 Special Power – Lycopene 🌟

Lycopene is the compound within tomatoes responsible for giving them their red colour. Studies have suggested that Lycopene can help reduce the risk of skin cancer by helping our skin protect itself from UV rays. Lycopene is also a strong antioxidant that can help protect against other forms of cancer.

We have a great selection of gourmet tomatoes to grow in the Grow Club today, so come and have a look!

 

Seed Pantry

Despite the cold and snowy weather this week  it’s time to sow these highly fragrant and beautiful flowers.

I spent some time today with the kids sowing our Sweet Peas ‘Almost Black’ and ‘Matucana’. We cannot wait to add these sweetly fragrant deep purples to the garden this Summer, following on from our Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’. A very industrious session, we managed to sow tomatoes ‘Black Opal’ and our aubergines ‘Jackpot’ too!

It took about 25 mins – the perfect amount of time before the kids wanted to move on to the next thing!…and we’ll revisit them once the green shoots appear and then again for planting out in Spring!

Founder – Neil & family.

 

Here at Seed Pantry, we have lots of healthy vegetables that you can grow from scratch at home! 🥗 So we thought we’d give you more detailed information on our favourites and what makes them so special and well worth growing yourself! 🎉

First up is the ✨🌶️ Chilli Pepper 🌶️✨

Chilli Peppers (Capsicum annuum) are famous for being spicy fruits often infused in dishes to add a little or a lot of heat! but they are rarely acknowledged for their nutritional content. Fresh chilli peppers are full of vitamins with its vitamin-C content being extremely high and around 3 times more than an orange per 100g! 🍊. This is something that is regularly overlooked as most people eat chilli peppers in small quantities compared to other fruits and vegetables.

They’re really easy to grow indoors at home and the yield is excellent – you won’t need to buy them again once you start growing these yourself!

They also have some special powers! 😲

🌟 Special Power – Capsaicin 🌟

Capsaicin is the compound within chillies that give it the pungent spicy taste! And early studies suggest it has anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic and anti-bacterial properties. So all those mouth scorchers might be worth it in the end!

We have a brilliant range of chilli seeds to grow, available right now at Seed Pantry seed & bulbs shop!

 

Seed Pantry Team

Before I joined Seed Pantry I had a lot of misconceptions about gardening, some of which now make me look very foolish. I touched upon this in my last blog, but until this year I believed most plants would grow within a month of being planted!  Obviously I now know that this isn’t the case, with most of my garden being scheduled to not start growing until early next year. The whole idea of a dormancy period for a flower bulb was completely alien to me, and if I’m honest I still don’t really understand it yet, but I am learning!

This month, I chose (typical me) all flower options in my Grow Club Box, and I am particularly looking forward to growing irises on my windowsill.  I initially thought I would never be able to keep planting new flowers each month. I believed that each flower bulb would need a country mile of its own space to grow, which my garden was not equipped for. However, once again I was proved wrong as Neil (Mr Seed Pantry himself) showed me a layering technique, known as a bulb lasagne, where I could use what space I had to create flower displays by clustering bulbs together at different depths.  Now I have set pots ready to grow with tulips, alliums and crocuses at various points over the next few months from the same tub!  Now my issue isn’t “oh no I don’t have any more space”, but “oh no, I have planted too many flowers and none of their colours match”.  The next thing I clearly need to learn is garden design because I think, come Spring, I am going to have loads of beautiful flowers that all look very silly next to each other…

For those who would like to learn this layering technique, we have posted a little tutorial on how to do it!

Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG8GgiK1JDQ

Nick

The Rookie Gardener

I cannot remember the last time I planted something in the ground with the intention for it to grow. I am sure, that as a child, I was tasked with helping with my school’s garden, but I have no memory of any of it at all. So, when I joined Seed Pantry and was keen to start growing my first ever garden, as I have been a flower lover my whole life. At first, I had no clue what I was doing. I quickly realised that I had a lot to learn.  Here is a list of 5 things I have learned since starting to grow my first ever garden.

1 . Read the instructions/ Do proper research.

Right this may seem obvious to most people, but I jumped straight into planting without reading anything or doing any research, so naturally I did nearly everything wrong. I even filmed a video of me planting September’s Crocus bulbs, by throwing them down into a poorly dug hole with no thought at all.  Luckily my mum, who witnessed me doing such a terrible job, dug all the bulbs up and placed the instructions that came with the box in front of me and forced me to read them. I quickly corrected my mistakes, however was left feeling pretty embarrassed.

2. Wear Appropriate Clothing (It really does get messy).

I have seen pictures of gardeners covered in mud all over the internet, however I never really realised how grubby gardening actually is!  After my first planting session there was soil everywhere, mud all over my clothes and dirt under each of my fingernails.  Next time I know I have to wear old clothes and gloves unless I want to ruin another shirt!

3.  Remember exactly what you are planting and where.

Once again this may seem a bit obvious, however I went in without much of a plan, randomly selected areas of my space and planted various seeds and bulbs. Afterwards, I didn’t take note of where or what I had planted. Now as a result I have green sprouts growing, and I have no idea what they are. I also have no idea what areas are available for planting this month’s box, which provides me with a great, new, unnecessary challenge of finding unused space.

4.  Keep an eye on the weather forecast.

Before I started growing, the only thing I checked the weather for was to see if I needed to wear a coat. But now, I realise I have to check the weather each week to see if my plants are going to get that sweet water they need to grow. If it’s dry, (like it has been most summer) then I have to plan time for watering, which fitting around work and my long commute adds another challenge to my day.

5. Be Patient

I was under the rather silly illusion that if I planted anything now, it would be fully grown in a month or two. Finding out my crocus bulbs would not come out till next spring was a bit of a shock to my millennial ‘need everything immediately’ mind set. However, I have come around to the idea that if I stay at it and keep planting throughout the cooler season, I will have quite a beautiful garden come the Spring. Just need to remember to read the instructions first…

Nick

The Rookie Gardener 

1. Start seed potatoes by chitting them first, place the rose end facing upwards in empty egg boxes on windowsills, once you have green shoots plant them.
2. Spread 15cm of potting compost at the bottom of the sack. Evenly space 3 seed potatoes on the compost, green shoot upwards and cover with 15cm of compost.
3. When the foliage shows through the compost allow it to grow to 20cm high, then cover with another 15cm of compost leaving 5cm showing. (Repeat until the container is full.)
4. Potatoes in bags require plenty of water particularly during dry weather, keep moist.

To keep on top of gardening join the Seed Pantry grow club, visit: Seed Pantry grow club