{"id":630,"date":"2013-02-23T14:22:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T14:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yoga-4-all.co.uk\/wp_news\/?p=630"},"modified":"2016-05-26T10:31:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T10:31:37","slug":"seeds-of-distinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoga-4-all.co.uk\/wp_news\/seeds-of-distinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeds of distinction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A series of colds as well as the inclement weather have seen us huddled fireside these past few months with little inclination to venture onto our wintry and wind battered allotment. Instead, a spot of indoor gardening – poring over seed catalogues and planning the year’s growing selection.<\/p>\n

\"\"Plus this week, sowing a batch of sweet peas in individual seed pots for germination under cover.<\/p>\n

Sweet peas are my favourite of all the annual flowers and an abundant sowing means armfuls of heavenly scented blooms to adorn the house all summer.\u00a0 They can be sown directly outside from April, but germinating them indoors gives you a head start when it comes to flowering.<\/p>\n

Sweet Peas have long trailing roots and so need to be germinated in deep pots. You can buy special “root trainer” plastic pots for this purpose, but I find that the insides of toilet rolls work just as well.\u00a0 Because they are biodegradable you not only avoid adding to the throw away plastic mountain but you can plant the cardboard roll straight into the ground, thus avoiding disturbance to the nascent root system.<\/p>\n

One word of caution if you use this method, the roots really are very tenacious and will colonise the whole seed tray if you are not careful.\u00a0 To avoid this, place each roll or group of rolls in a larger pot with a firm bottom to it two to three weeks after germination.<\/p>\n

For vegetable seeds, we have a handful of favourite seed suppliers and seed varieties that we order year after year.\u00a0 But then each growing season it’s fun to throw in a couple of newcomers.\u00a0 Sometimes these are successful, like last year’s Thelma Sanders winter squash; now a firm fixture on on the allotment.\u00a0\u00a0 Just as often they are not (Sarah Raven’s beautifully packaged but disappointing purple peas to give one example) and you just have to put it down to experience.<\/p>\n

With some vegetable seeds, there are a whole tranche of things that seem to grow reliably from any supplier. Things like perpetual spinach, turnips, radishes and broad beans to name a few.\u00a0 But with other things we’ve found a considerable variation.\u00a0 So with these varieties, we stick to a particular supplier for seeds that:<\/p>\n