Freebies and my love of sunflowers

With a smidgen of space of my windowsill, I have decided to make a start on growing some seeds I have acquired through buying a certain magazine (You don't have to be Sherlock to guess which one ;D).

The viola seeds I've had for about a year, I was going to grow them last year for Autumn, but in the end I opted for wallflowers instead.

The red sunflowers are from last months magazine, I find I am like a magpie regarding sunflowers and pumpkins (which I tell you about at a later date.)  I love the different varieties and think this might stem from my childhood and my Sindy greenhouse.  The flimsy toy came with a collection of seeds including sunflowers.  The bigger the plant grew, the more I was fascinated.  How could such a small seed grow into something as tall as my Dad's garage?  From then on I grew them every year, courtesy of a seed or two from my hamsters food.  This however waned in my moody teenage years, but my love of sunflowers came back once I had a garden of my own.  The seeds are now courtesy of the garden bird's gru, as I longer have a hamster to steal from.  So along with these plus a smaller variety in my pot luck selection, I now have a red stunner to add to my borders this Summer.

 

It's all your fault Sindy...

Growing my five a day...

In my previous post I made a start on growing my pot luck collection of flower seeds, well now I am starting on the veg.

The selection I bought from ebay contains the unusual round courgette, a mixture of aubergines and tomatoes for a hanging basket.  There is also miniature lettuce, dwarf beans and cabbage.

I most admit I did grumble to myself when I saw the aubergines and tomatoes, I don't know what it is but I've never had much luck growing them.  The tomatoes are either tiny or non existent and when I have attempted aubergines, the plants put on a great flower show then drop off taking the potential veg with them.

If there's anyone out there reading this who is an expert in tomatoes and/or aubergines, please drop me a line and tell me were I am going wrong.  That would be fantastic :D

Dismal efforts aside.  I must say whenever I have grown beans and lettuce I always had an abundance, and when I grew long courgettes I would blink and it would be a marrow!  Never mind!  Me and the hubby would eat it all the same!

Anyway I started growing the tomatoes, aubergines, courgette and lettuce on my now crowded windowsill, the beans and cabbage are still sat waiting in their packets until the warmer weather...

It's that time of year again....

What with spring in the air, or wind and rain if you live in the UK. I decided it was time to make a start on growing a few plants for my garden, and this year I thought I do something a little different.  I have bought two potluck bags of mixed seeds from ebay, one bag contained flowers whilst the other is veg (I tell you about them in my next blog :).

The flower seeds were a mix of the usual pansies, sweet peas and marigolds.  Plus a few surprises which included aster and chrysanthemum both of which I have never grown, so I am quite excited to see what pops up out the soil.

I've started the pansy, sweet pea, lobelia, nasturtium, aster, rudbeckia, mini sunflower, marigold in pots on the windowsill.  The rest I will put straight in the garden or in pots when the weather perks up :)

I put three sets of seeds in one tray using two extra long plant label sticks as dividers.  Window space in my house is somewhat limited!