Seed catalogues ready for perusal
I had planned to sort out my seed order over the Christmas holiday but it is January 5th and I have only just got round to digging out the seed catalogues. I’m not quite sure what happened to all that time. I did spend 2 days on the sofa with a cold, visited a friend in London and family in Somerset so that accounts for some of the time. Maybe subconciously I realised the task wasn’t going to be a simple one and should be tackled when I felt refreshed after the holiday period was over.
Reading other blogs it’s clear that there is a flurry of seed ordering activity going on and so I panicked a bit yesterday, dug out the seed catalogues and sat down in front of the fire last night with my garden notebook and graph paper.
Initially I made a list, which turned out to be a very long list, of the plants and varieties I would like to grow. My plans are complicated slightly by growing cut flowers as well as vegetables on my allotment. I’m trying to get plants that will provide flowers throughout the summer and in colours that will work well together in arrangements and have good vase life.
It will be my second year on my allotment and this year I am trying to make the space work as efficiently as possible. So this means looking for different varieties to get a succession of crops throughout the summer. Working out how much space I need to provide us with a good supply of a particular crop, trying to get the balance between not planting enough, as I did last year with leeks, and not ending up with so much of something that they end up back on the compost heap (not an efficient use of space).
I read a very useful book from the library entitled The Low Maintenance Gardener by Clare Matthews. She suggests how many of each crop to grow to feed an average family. So using her spacing guidelines, I worked out how much space I would need for each crop. Then came out the graph paper. I find it quite hard to visualise the space at the allotment and how much space everything will take up. I have 10 beds on my plot that are about 1.2 metres wide and just over 6 metres long so I’ve drawn these up on the graph paper. This was as far as I got last night. I now need to work out what will have to go from my wish list. It is a difficult balancing act between growing crops that I know are productive and tasty and that we will eat and wanting to try new things. For instance, I’ve grown sweetcorn the last 2 years and each year they have succumbed to the dull, cool summer weather and not produced a crop. But even if they had, they produce in one go and then the crop is over. I’ve come to the conclusion they are not an efficient use of space when space is at a premium. This year there will be no sweetcorn but there will be some peas and mange tout.
My other seed ordering dilemma is that invariably I end up wanting seeds from 4 or 5 different catalogues but when I look at how much I’m spending on postage and packing it can be nearly a third of my order and then I start thinking about how many packets of seeds I could buy with that money. The last couple of years I have ended up sacrificing variety for cost and buying from only 1 or 2 suppliers.
So tonight, if I get the chance, I will sit down with a cup of tea and possibly some chocolate to soften the blow, as I have to try and narrow down my planting plans. Will there be space for ‘Crystal Apple’ cucumbers and borlotti beans and can I justify 4 varieties of antirrhinums? Wish me luck.
wellywoman 
Good luck! I was poring over my own seed catalogues last night. Luckily had the foresight to hold off the order button until the cold light of day had trimmed my ambitions.
I’m a bit of a minimalist and have a small half-plot so I’m generally able to be sensible with seed buying. Good luck! xx
Ah it’s hard. We dealt with our veg list last month, through my mother-in-law’s gardening club; I added a few rarer seeds from other suppliers, particularly squashes, and for flowers/perennials I have placed a few orders without really considering p&p, as I have spotted things. A few times I have started to load an online basket with choices, but then discarded the lot in favour of a different supplier from whom I can get some, but not all, of the first set along with others that were higher on the priority list. It’s all such a balancing act! Seedsbypost are pretty good for one-offs from the big suppliers with free p&p, though their selection is more limited and they may need to substitute (or cancel) your choice.
Good luck!
In the past I’ve shared seeds with other gardeners as so often there are more than we need. That works well on a local level. One of the seed suppliers used to do smaller taster packets but I haven’t seen these recently.
I have a whole box of seed packets from years gone by. The problem is some will be viable and some will not. Dane Pearson is last Sunday’s Observer magazine, suggested you throw them all on a spare bit of ground and see what comes up….You can tell he’s moved to a bigger place…There isn’t any spare ground at ours!
PS I’m giving up on the sweetcorn too for the same reasons…
I went through exactly the same exercise as you last evening only to find that I hardly needed any seeds at all. I did a lot of seed buying at the end of the last gardening season when they were being sold off at 75% off. Spreading my seed packets out over the floor I found so many duplicates (four packets of parsnips for example). I really must get more organised!
Hi,
I bought myself some more seeds today; I think I’m going to have too many varieties as it is for me to handle, but I couldn’t not get the two different types of Foxgloves! 😀
I also needed to replace a few seed packets that just don’t appear to be sprouting any more – that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it…
Good luck picking out your seeds; I am sure you’ll have a fun time doing it!
I’ve discovered some lovely seed companies in the past year – Real Seeds, Jungle Seeds and More Veg to name a few, so am fairly well set up for this year (in fact, like Elaine, too well set up) but I still can’t resist those seed catalogues! More Veg, incidentally, do small taster packets at very reasonable prices so it’s possible to just grow a few plants without having leftover seeds. Will be interesting to read about your final choices!
Don’t give up on the sweetcorn, it really is one veg where you can taste the difference of home grown. My sweetcorn hasn’t done well over the last couple of years either so I’m hoping that this is the year that I’ll get a bumper crop. I usually get most of my seeds in the Wyevale sale at 50p per packet, it ends up saving me loads, so there’s only a few things which I still need to buy.
Oh to buy or not to buy-that is the question! I’ve given up on sweetcorn too-our summer (what summer?) just too short and wet! I get most of my seeds from Wallis seeds-they do different sized packs and are good value, but I wish I could get smaller packs of stuff-there’s just the 2 of us and an average pack of 1 type of cabbage has 200 seeds and if only half come up thatstill means we have 100 cabbages and we couldn’t eat a whole cab in one sitting so doesn’t leave much room for any other veg! Not to mention the damage we’d be doing to the ozone layer!
Just like Elaine, I went through my seed wish list, then checked my seed boxes and found that I already have most of the seeds that I want to grow this year. Also I did manage to save a fair few flower seeds such as Nigella, Nicotiana sylvestris and Cleome this year. I too didn’t plant enough leeks last year, but then found a couple of full-ish looking packs in the box-what was I thinking of last spring! I find Nicky’s Nursery reasonable and last autumn they scored very high on seed viability in Gardening Which trials-always good to know -Chiltern Seeds always tempting. Good luck with decision making and looking forward to seeing the fruits of your choices later in the year.
My husband is the planner..the seed packets are laying on the table and the garden design is in the works…we always tend to over plant and yes too much veggies end up back on the compost pile. But we are learning…Great Post!
Oh what pleasurable dilemmas though providing hours of captivating entertainment and until you eventually send off the order there’s no cost at all. What could be better!
Eeeek. Am I the only one who hasn’t yet picked up a seed catalogue? I do have tons of seeds in my cherished boxes but it’s time to put my feet up and peruse, I think. Thanks for the reminder.
Dave
I am another who hasn’t focused and ordered seeds; perhaps it will lead to disappointment. I am enjoying my winter respite, putting our homes’ Christmas jewelry away and reading gardening blogs. I tell myself I will get to it.
🙂 This post has made me smile a lot – as we are in the middle of our seed dilemmas, which is the only nice thing about January!
K