Springtime in the garden

It's an exciting month, with any seeds you planted indoors well into growth, and it's also time to start sowing outdoors. Just watch out for frosts. And remember the snow we had that one day in April last year?! In France we’re told not to plant delicate plants outside until after the ‘Saints de glace’, but that’s not until May 11th-13th, and I for one am not sufficiently patient to wait until then. So be prepared with some form of protection for tender plants and seedlings.

When To Sow Seeds

Hardy plants (annuals, biennials and perennials)

Mainly spring and early autumn, plus summer for biennials such as foxgloves and honesty.

Half-hardy annuals

Late spring, after the last frost, choosing smaller, fast-growing cultivars of, for example, cosmos, nasturtiums and French marigolds.

Vegetable seeds

Mainly spring and/or summer, plus early autumn for certain hardy or fastmaturing crops.

Bear in mind too that in milder regions sowing can begin earlier, while in colder regions it may need to be later. Also, lighter soils warm up more quickly in spring, ready for sowing, while sowing may need to be delayed in heavy, damp soils, which stay colder for longer.

How To Prepare Your Soil

1. Choose a sowing site that’s suitable for the plants you want to grow.

2. Weed the area, either by hand or with a hoe, and loosen the soil, firm it gently, then rake level, removing any lumps of soil and large stones.

Sowing in a drill makes it easy to tell which are your seedlings and which are the weeds, so you know what to remove and what to keep.

How To Sow In Drills

1. Make a shallow drill using a stick or trowel. Straight drills are ideal for sowing vegetables, but with flowers you may want a less regimented result, with curving or wavy drills, or drills in random directions within your sowing area.

2. Water along the drill to dampen the base.

3. Pour a small amount of seeds into the palm of your hand. If the seeds are large enough to pick up individually, simply place them along the base of your drill at the given spacing. If they are small, take a pinch of seeds between your thumb and finger and drop them as thinly as you can along the drill.

4. Fill the drill with the soil you removed, then firm down gently.

5. Label the drill, water along the row using a watering can with a fine rose.

6. If sowing more than one row, check the seed packet for the recommended spacing between rows.

7. The smaller the seeds, the shallower you should sow them. Some of the smallest can simply be scattered on the soil surface. If you sow small seeds too deeply, they won’t germinate, so always check seed packets for sowing depths.

How To Sow Without Drills

If you want your plants to look more natural, perhaps for a wildflower patch, you may not want to sow in drills. Scattering, or broadcasting, seeds is very straightforward:

1. Mark out your sowing area with a line of sand or insert short sticks at the corners

2. Prepare the soil by weeding and levelling, as above.

3. Scatter the seeds thinly and evenly over the area. To get an even

By Ronnie Ogier

Ronnie is a passionate gardener and now loves sharing her years of experience of success and failures in her own garden and sharing it with you. Also a keen runner, having been bitten by the ‘Couch to 5K’ bug!

coverage when sowing very fine seeds, you can mix them with some sand. This lets you scatter them more thinly and you can see where you’ve sown.

4. Firm the seeds into the soil with the back of your rake or trowel.

5. Small seeds generally don’t need covering, while larger seeds can be covered with a light scattering of soil or compost.

6. Water using a watering can fitted with a rose.

7. Add a label, so you remember what you’ve sown and where.

With this method, weeding has to be done by hand, so it’s useful if you can recognise which seedlings are weeds. You can also sow seeds into containers, either as their final growing position, or temporarily until large enough to plant into the ground.

It's worth noting that whilst most seeds can be sown direct from the packet, a few with tough seed coats may need presoaking, scraping or nicking (with sandpaper or a knife) to aid germination. A few others need a period of cold or heat before they will germinate.

How To Look After Seedlings

1. For best results, seedlings need regular attention until they are sturdy and well rooted. Seedlings are very vulnerable in the first few months. Seedlings will usually appear within a couple of weeks – check the seed packet for exact timings.

2. Keep slugs and snails at bay - Slugs and snails like to eat soft, juicy seedlings, so keep populations at bay and/or put protection in place.

3. Keep the compost slightly moist at all times – seedlings will soon die if they get too dry as they don’t have deep roots.

4. Weed every few weeks.

5. Protect from frost - hardy seedlings from autumn sowings should cope with light frosts, but keep horticultural fleece or cloches handy and cover them if a hard frost is forecast.

6. Thin out after about a month - first remove the weakest, smallest seedlings. Then, if you still haven’t reached the correct final spacing, remove a few more where necessary, leaving strong, healthy, wellspaced seedlings.

7. With flowering plants, it’s usually beneficial to pinch out the tips of long shoots to encourage branching. This will result in bushier plants that will carry more flowers.

I hope this article has helped more people to understand that sowing seeds outdoors is an easy, inexpensive, and fun way to grow new plants. It’s ideal for a wide range of hardy flowers and vegetables.

Happy sowing!

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