Last Saturday morning I had a double surprise in the post. Not one, but two envelopes full of seeds plopped onto my doormat. One was sent from France by Fred, posted on Thursday – not bad, less than 48 hours – we have indulged in a little chilli seed swap. The other was from the Hardy Plant Society seed distribution scheme. This is the first batch of seeds I am expecting from them, there should be another two batches, another 40 packets in total. I listed out my order back in December. I might have got carried away.

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I was pretty excited to receive all these seeds, a big Cheshire cat grin was resident on my face for the rest of the day. There are some fantastic varieties here, I’m really looking forward to growing them and seeing what I end up with – you can’t always predict when the parent plant is a hybrid, they are unlikely to come true from seed. With hardy perennial seeds, there’s no point hanging about, so off I went with Child #4 to the potting shed to sow away.

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Over the course of the weekend I indulged in a binge of seed sowing, all of the seeds I received from the HPS were sown, except for the tagetes, which will wait till March or April. I was mindful of the research I did recently on the proper treatment for each variety of seeds, so they are now reclining in the environment best suited to them. Some are in the heated bench…

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Some are on unheated staging in the greenhouse….

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And some are in the cold-frame outside. The left hand group will stay outside until germination, the right hand group will stay outside for a month or two then go back in the greenhouse.

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Some of Fred’s seeds were also sown, two varieties of chilli to add to my growing selection. I have saved some lovely looking French beans (in both senses of the word!) and some cucumber seeds for later in the year.

Of course, sowing the seeds is the easy part – things will get busy when they all start germinating. I do love this process.

I’ll be back soon with more seedy business.

Update 25/01/18. The second batch has arrived! I shall be sowing at the weekend…