January is a great time to select your veg seeds for your garden. Growing your own is the perfect way to cut down on your rising food bills. Not only does it save you money, but it also gives you the option to grow organic veg. Plus the huge satisfaction that comes with producing your own food. Growing your own therefore makes perfect sense! Whether you have a vast allotment or just a pot on a balcony. There are options for everyone.
Time To Buy Your Seeds
January is a great time of year to start thinking about growing your own as it is the start of the growing season. So get buying those seeds soon! To kick off, I have just planned my own vegetables to grow this season. I love doing this and always try to grow something new to me. I usually sit down in front of a roaring fire, working out what I have already got and what I need for the coming year.
So What To Choose to grow?
If you are just starting out for your first time, then I would recommend choosing easy-to-grow things that you like eating. You might like to try:
Lettuce (lots of varieties to choose from but Oak leaf cut and come again is a good easy reliable starter), French Beans, Runner beans, Beetroot, Radish, courgettes, tomatoes, Carrots, Spinach, Chard, Strawberries, etc
For the more adventurous or those that have more space, you could try
Aubergines, Potatoes, Cauliflowers, Cabbage, Globe Artichokes, kale, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Parsnips etc.
However, not everyone has the time or space to grow from seeds so plug plant seedlings (small seedlings grown in a small amount of compost) are available to plant later in the year.
I want to save more seeds this year instead of buying totally new ones every time. I won’t, therefore, be growing F1 Hybrids unless I have to, as the seeds will either be sterile or won’t match the parent plant. In days gone by, anyone who grew also saved seeds. Few people do this now. Instead, most people rely on large seed sellers who only sell a restricted selection of plants. As a result, we have lost 90per cent of our vegetable varieties in the UK. If we are to have more food variety resilience required by climate change, then we need the diversity of heirloom and heritage varieties to breed new more resilient plants. I, thus, intend to grow a few of these heirloom varieties this year as well to try and do my bit.
My Garden Setup
In my garden, I have three raised beds 3.2m long x 1.1m wide. I am also fortunate enough to have a small 4ft square greenhouse. Most summers this is rammed with Tomatoes, Cucumber and Basil and full of seedlings in the spring. This year I also intend to grow some more of the more ornamental veg amongst my flower beds in much the same way as cottage gardeners used to. This has several benefits. Firstly, it increases my growing space without compromising the look of my ornamental garden. Secondly, there are lots of lovely beneficial insects on hand to pollinate and keep down pests.
I usually loosely use the square foot method of growing to get the most from the space I have in my veg garden. This is where you split up your growing area into one foot or 30cm squares. Within these squares, you can plant varying multiples of vegetables depending on the size of the plants. The idea is that you can grow more veg in a small space with less hassle. I will be going into more detail about this method in a later blog so look out for this.
Some Suppliers You Could Try
There are loads of companies out there to choose from for seeds and plug plants. I like to choose a mix of well-tried and tested varieties as well as some unusual types to experiment with. My problem is that I always try and grow too much in the space I have. This results in small plants and sometimes poor crops. Note to self. Keep plants spaced in the correct spaces and don’t shade them out with other plants!
Here is a list of just some of the seed companies that you could try.
Chiltern seeds – not great for sowing information on the seed packets but some unusual varieties
Suttons seeds – One of the large seed companies
Kings seeds -Good value seeds
DT Brown & Co – Good growing guides
Marshalls seeds – good selection
Happy gardening!