Читать книгу In Bloom - Clare Nolan - Страница 30

Sowing indoors allows you to grow your own half-hardy annuals from seed and get a jump start on the season with hardy annuals.

While it’s perfectly possible to grow seeds inside on a bright windowsill without any special kit, you will get much better results if you invest in a heated mat or propagator and a grow light. It was a game changer for me.

Most of my seeds are sown thinly into square 2 ¾ in (7cm) pots as I don’t need masses of each variety and it saves on space in my propagator, but any container that holds soil and allows water to drain can be used. I also use traditional seed trays when I need more of something, and I sow sweet peas and sunflowers into root-trainers, which help to develop their larger root systems. This year, I began making my own soil blocks – where the soil acts as both the growing material and the container – it worked really well and in time I will switch over to these entirely.

I always use a good-quality commercial seed soil that has been specially formulated for propagating – it’s a good consistency for small seeds. For larger seeds such as sweet peas and sunflowers, I use a multipurpose potting soil.

The newly sown seeds go into my heated propagator with a grow light overhead and they stay there until they have emerged and the seedlings formed a pair of true leaves (these differ in shape and color to the first leaves). Then I prick them out carefully with a pencil and pot them on individually into bigger pots, usually a 2 ¾ in (7cm) pot, and move them to my heated bench in the greenhouse where they’ll stay until they are big enough to be planted out (after hardening off).

2 ¾ in (7cm) pots are an efficient way for me to maximize the space in my heated propagator so I can start a large number of different varieties.

Direct sowing hardy annuals in the spring to replace the early tulips I’ve already harvested.