What do you need to start growing flowers?
The answer is, not much at all!
Growing flowers from seed can be a bit daunting, but if you’ve joined our Grow-Along, you’re half way there already. You’ve ordered your seeds, now you just need a few other bits and you’ll be ready to grow a gorgeous garden. Lockdown is making it difficult to get some things, but you should be able to find most stuff around the house. Yoghurt pots can be used as plant pots, old roasting trays can become seed trays…get creative and see what you can repurpose!
The essentials…
Soil to start your seeds in.
Plant pots of varying sizes
Plant labels
A spray bottle
Nice to have but not necessary…
A propagator and lid
Root trainers/deep pots for sweet peas
A heat mat
Choosing the right soil.
The soil you sow your seeds in is important. Seedling compost is ideal but if you don’t have any, normal potting soil will do just fine. Ideally you want something that is fine, without any big lumps or stones in it, and something that will drain well. Each tiny seed contains all the nutrients and energy that it needs to sprout, so you don’t need soil that has extra fertilisers in it. If your soil is too rich in nutrients (home made compost, for example) it can burn your precious seedlings and kill them before they get started!
If you’re really struggling to get your hands on any soil, nip out to your garden and borrow some from a flower bed. Just be sure to get all the chunks out before you use it, a colander or sieve is great for this! (Don’t bake brownies on the same day, or things could get gritty. Please don’t ask me how I know!)
Pots and seed trays.
You can sow your seeds in just about any container you can find. Seed trays are often flimsy and break easily, meaning that lots of plastic gets thrown away, so recycling food containers is a good choice. Ice cream tubs, butter tubs, and trays that ready meals come in are all perfect for seed sowing. Cake and pastry containers are my favourite as they come with a clear lid, perfect mini propagators! (And, lets face it, who doesn’t love an excuse to eat cake!)
It’s handy to have a variety of sizes, you’ll need some that are wide and flat (at least 5cm deep), fruit punnets are great because they already have drainage holes in them, or you could use a 2 litre pop bottle cut in half lengthways. You’ll also need some 9cm pots for when it’s time to transplant your seedlings. If you don’t have any to hand, yoghurt pots, paper cups, or the bottom half of plastic bottles with some holes poked in them all make fab plant pots. Sweet peas are the only seeds that need special containers, they grow tap roots that are long and go straight down, so deep pots are a must!
Labels, watering and other bits.
It might seem like a silly thing to mention, but I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve left my labels somewhere and thought “I’ve got a great memory! I’ll remember what I’ve planted”. Believe me, I always forget. If you don’t have any plant labels you can use lolly sticks, old slatted blinds or even coke cans cut into strips. It doesn’t matter what you use, as long as you use something!
Watering can be tricky when seedlings are really small and the last thing you want to do is drown them. A quick spritz to dampen the soil is all they need, you could go all out and get a fancy sprayer, but an empty (and well cleaned) febreze bottle or something similar will do the trick just as well. Similarly, you don’t need a heat mat, but if you have one it will be very useful when it’s time to sow some of your seeds, but a warm windowsill or the top of your fridge is fine.