When & how to sow?? Sending out a distress call from a newbie gardener.. Help!!

cora09

I recently went nuts on ebay and bought seeds to plants that looked lovely but now that i have them I don't know when to sow the seeds.. I've tried google but it's confusing me cos all I'm getting is people going on in gardening lingo that I don't understand and talking about things like nitrogen, phosporus, acidity, usda zones, 'grow' bulbs and blah blah blah blah blah... I'm going to put up the list of what I have and any tips or words of experience for any of them would be well appreciated
Okay here we go;

These are the odd ones -

Purple Apple Berry (requires smoke treatment wtf?)
Autumn Olive
Red Kapok Cotton Tree
Chinese Lantern (Physalis Franchetii)
Pink Mountain Berry
Empress Tree
Pulmeria Rubra (Leis flowers -you know the ones the hawaiian's use to make necklaces)
White 'Soul' strawberries

These are the regular normal people types (aka not the oddball, 'over-enthuastic about things I don't know about' type like me)

FLOWERS -
Sunflowers (red, yellow and vanilla ice [white])
Boston Ivy
Herbs (parsley, chives & thyme)
Pansies
Californian Poppies
Lobelia

VEGGIES- I'd like to know how to go about planting these in order to use them myself rather than buying them but not having them all ready at the same time and ending up with a 'glut' & essentially burdening myself with too much for me and friends & family to comsume

These are the veg i have seeds for -

Brocolli
Carrots (regular orange, solar yellow, samurai red & cosmic purple varities)
Beetroot
Onion (Itallian white 'Barletta')

Also if anyone could help me out with growing my own garlic from a clove of the garlic I buy regularly as part of my grocery shop... I put it in everything - cooked garlic is delish, apparently v.good for you and it keeps fleas off the dog too if you can get him to eat some of it raw... shur i guess you could put it in a cruster and mix it with his din-dins.

Sorry for going on, you probably have a pain in your face by now from reading all of this but I do appreciate the time you've taken for lil' ol' me (i'm only 24 but its a figure of speech)... Oh and can i grow peas from peas? my aunt grew some and gave me a s**t load of them cos she and her family are like human trumpets from eating them .. (back to avoiding the 'glut' thing) and I'm wondering if I could grow my own next year from the ones she gave me???

I'm going to shut up now :rolleyes: ...and as I said any tips or advo would be greatly appreciated..

Regards
Cora

looksee

Right. Some of those seeds you will have to keep until next spring:
Sunflowers, herbs, lobelia.
Californian poppies you can scatter in a prepared bed now, where you want them to grow, they do not transplant happily. They do however grow like weeds.
Pansies either keep till early spring then sprinkle into a tray of potting compost and cover with polythene (lift it off the compost) till they are just showing then let them grow in a light place till they have more than two sets of leaves. The first 'leaves' are not real leaves. Then transplant them into individual small pots in about 3s and let then get established before setting them in the garden. Or do the same now, but I would leave it till spring.

Veg leave till next spring - root plants like carrots and beetroot you plant directly into the ground in spring as they do not like to be moved. The others grow like pansies.

Of the 'odd' opnes, the Chinese lanterns are easy, once in the garden they will probably continue on - treat them like the pansies in early spring.

All the others seem to have US names and may not grow here, depending on what zone they are intended for. Unless you want to look up each individually I suggest you chance treating them like the pansies in spring, sow them in small trays and transplant as they sprout. Trees can take a long time to come through, so put them outside once frost is past and keep them watered but don't throw them away for 12 months.

This is very rough and ready advice and not everything is going to grow. Some tree seeds need to be chilled or even frozen before germination, others you would kill doing that. No idea what the smoke business is. Even if they germinate they may not survive, you would have to look up each one and see what area it grows in.

For the exotic stuff I would be inclined to check up see if you can find any specific information. Don't worrry too much about the feeding advice, the only thing you need worry about is if it requires acid rather than alkaline compost (you can get ericaceous compost for acid lovers). I have checked a couple of them and they seem to be Australian. I think they will be a bit tender for Irleand.

cora09

Ya, as far as i know the purple berry seeds (the ones that require smoke treatment) are aussie plants, they've adapted in a way that they need the chemicals derived from smoke after a bush fire so they can grow, mainly competition free as everything else is basically cleared. The others are asian, american or mexico natives oops and the regular ones are either the veg (mostly ebayed) or the plants which i got from B&Q's value range and a lot of them don't come with a sowing season chart (guess it wasn't included in the €0.40 'value' price tag) ... I got the majority if not all of the odd ones from The Botany Seed Company based in the UK and basically went thru their ebay store going 'ooh.. i'll have one a'dem and one a'dem hmm.. *gasp* i like the look of that one'.. and so on.. but altough they're packaged very well and give some good guidline instructions on each little baggie.. I guess only so much text can fit on a label. I've wiki'ed most of em, thats when I got worried lol guess i should have done that BEFORE i bought them huh? ah well lesson learned... tisk tisk

I guess I'll attempt starting them off in the hot press to keep em warm and then IF (that there's a big 'if') they do sprout I'll try growing them on in large pots when they're big enough and plamause them during winter months, see will they grow indoors and then let em out for fresh air during the summer see how they get on... plus it'll keep em small for me just to dot em around the garden (thats my plan anyway, my plans tend to not go as planned though)... Like the rose seeds i got from china through ebay (anyone else seing a pattern lol), blue and lilac ones looked lllllooooooovely in the pics, bought em, recieved em after a week or so.. then found out they had to be put through a 'Cold Stratification', aka a 'false winter', aka put in the fridge in some damp tissue for a couple of weeks, on order for them to germinate.. so I did what it said on the tin, after 2weeks.. not a sprig, 3 weeks..still nuttin, 4weeks.. nada ..so after about 6weeks I just put em in some compost in a little pot and fecked em outside still no signs of life from them but they can stay out there till next spring and I told em if they don't grow up and get their act together.. they're gone

So after all that i basically have nothing to do til next spring?... humphhh... meh!
Anyway.. Thanks for the advo Looksee

Micheal GIY

Hi Cora
Yep, this is not really the time of year for planting many types of seeds. My main interest in growing is planting fruit, veg and herbs for food. You mentioned in your post that you are hoping to grow some vegetables and you already have some seeds to get started. You might find that if you are starting out, you might be better to choose what to grow based on what is easiest to start with and what you will make most use of. Onions are straightforward but people starting out find them easier to grow from sets (but them loose or in net bags in spring) than from seed. Other things to consider are lettuce (get a packed of mixed seed), spuds (grow early varieties which means they grow and are out of the ground before the blight becomes a problem), courgettes, garlic and herbs.
If you want to get some help and advice on growing food, visit www.giyireland.com or check out to see if there is a local GIY group in your area where your neighbours can offer advice on what grows well in your area.
Mícheál

looksee

I have certainly done variations on that type of buying Cora, got a random mixed packet of tree and shrub seeds years ago from a firm in England that does something similar. Some of them sprouted and I actually got a good selection of Arbutus, Indian Bean tree and several others including easy things like cotoneaster. It was entertaining and great experience!

cora09

Thanks for the reply Micheal, would you be able to tell me if I can grow peppers from the seeds in the regular shop bought peppers? and also my own peas from those I got from my aunt (mentioned above). I do have some onions growing at the moment 63 of them to be exact but i'm afraid they're just gonna be big bottomed scallions as well as some brocolli, a whole 6 carrots and about 4 beetroot (I forgot to water them the one hot day in a whole week was p**sing down rain some time in may and a load of stuff got scorched) and we recently moved see (in early june) and thats why I started this gardening stuff... and I had stuff started from seed with the intention of planting them right away but I was left waiting on some top soil for my veggie boxes and my flower beds, it was only dropped off last week so everything I'd grown is still in pots and dying back at this stage *exaggerated sad face* and my veggies & red sunflowers (that I was dying to see and harvest for more nxt yr) are stunted from being kept huddled up in containers for so long.

According to my aunt (the one who gave me the peas) it wasn't a good year for flowers anyway, thanks to the 'fantastic' summer we had, the foilage grew like mad and the flowers themselves didn't really make it out.. Looking at what I have that actually makes sense, I even bought some clearance stuff in B&Q today including a rose that was suffering from 'balling' due to all the rain we've had.

Looking at the site you posted now.. 'ooh a competition'...'*pffft* - a slogan competition aaawwwwwaaaaaahhhhh!!!'
Ah well site added to my faves bar anyway ^_^

Micheal GIY

Hi Cora
It is well worth trying to grow all sorts of stuff from seeds you get from veg in the supermarket as you might well have success. However, when it comes to stuff like peppers and chillies you might be best to source seeds or seedlings which are suitable to cooler climates (ours!!) in order to get the best results. With peppers you won't want a pile of plants so it is worth watching out for some people to swap seedlings with in Spring.

Yes it has been a funny year for all plants, with some doing very well and others doing much worse than usual. My peas are faring okay, just okay, but my Mange Touts have done as well as ever and are starting to buildup in the kitchen. The same as other peas, you can keep this to as seeds for next year - just let them grow onin the pod and then harvest, dry and store. I prefer mange toute to ordinary peas purelt because you get so much more "eating" per plant!

Be sure to look out for fellow growers in your own area - they will be the best source of advice you will find, although you are doing pretty well already.

Mícheál

fodda

A good website for all food growing be it veg, fruit, or livestock is www.grow-your-own.ie

And yes what a strange and bad year for growing, the bad weather in May/June was the cause of many problems i think.

cora09

I thought mangetout was just 'baby' peas? where the peas themselves haven't deveolped in the pods? I'd prefer mangetout, you can put them into stirfrys or boil them, I like mine with a good crunch, pinch of salt and a knob of real butter... mmmmmmm would eat a plateful and I could too cos my fellas big and small don't like their greens lol... got a veggie bed down today using the topsoil from my uncle, bark mulch I got free from the Co.Council recycling centre and some bunny poop... put the brocolli and onions i had already grown in.. i know its probably time i was harvesting them but as i said.. they were stunted so I thought I'd be better off chancin my arm rather then just feckin em away.. shur we'll see how goes

I'll try the site Fodda thanks for the link