Today was a cold, damp day. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and did not go and finish cutting the lawn edges, instead spending the afternoon sorting out my accumulated packets of seeds. A slight snuffle and catch at the back of the throat, and vaguely aching neck and a sensation of clamminess, left me with the nasty feeling that I was a hair's breadth from going down with a cold, and since I had the option of keeping warm and dry I thought I might as well take it. The Systems Administrator admitted to feeling the same, so I think we both have a touch of something. Perhaps we are just turning into a pair of hypochondriacs.
Many of the seeds came free with magazines and are by their nature a mixed bunch. Some will come in useful and I'll sow them next year. Some are of plants I like but already have growing in the garden. I may not need more, or the ones I have may self seed so generously that I don't have to sow them again. Sweet rocket is great, but when you've planted it once your future interventions will probably be to weed out unwanted plants, not to raise more. Then there are some varieties I wouldn't give house room to. Everything that's worth keeping is now packed away in a mouse proof plastic storage box down in the cool of the garage.
I saved my own seeds from two sorts of Watsonia, the splendid bright red Papaver bracteatum, and Cephalaria gigantea. I harvested some Belamcanda seed as well, but have already sown them since they were huge, fleshy, and looked as though they would dry out before the February sowing. Garden centres and catalogues will try to sell you brown paper packets with cute designs on for your home collected seed at some exorbitant sum for ten envelopes, but I simply keep the return envelopes from catalogues and charity mail shots.
Some seed is not worth keeping. I chucked out this year's parsnip seed, since fresh germinates so much better than year old, and any packets dated earlier than 2014 other than poppies. Magazines keep giving away poppy seed, and I've accumulated several varieties each of Papaver rhoeas, the common field poppy, and P. somniferum, the opium poppy. Next year I should simply chuck them all down on the gravel and see what comes up.
There are a few packets of things I've bought and not sown. That's annoying, since as the saying goes they won't grow in the packet. The problem comes with seeds meant for direct sowing, when it seemed a good idea in January to order them, and then the place where they were meant to be sown was not ready come the summer. Tiny seeds tend to last longer than bigger ones, but apart from the notorious short lived species like parsnips it's generally worth trying seed next year if you didn't manage to sow it this. I got a generous crop of Verbascum chaixii var. album this year from a packet I opened in 2014 and sowed half which totally failed to germinate. I must have got the watering wrong at some key point.
My tiny bulblets of the suicide lily, Gladioulus flanaganii, are safely tucked away in an envelope as well. The foliage began to die down as autumn approached, so I let the pots dry out to avoid rotting the bulbs, but had visions of going out to the greenhouse one morning and finding mice had excavated the dry pots and eaten the bulblets. I will repot them and start them back into growth next spring, probably mixing some extra grit into the compost to make absolutely sure that it drains OK. About March seems to be the consensus for when to do this.
In the meantime everything has been entered on to a spreadsheet sorted into perennials, hardy annuals, half hardy annuals, biennials, and vegetables and herbs, along with a note of the seed source and age. It should prevent me from ordering things only to realise that I've already got a packet, and with any luck will discourage me from ordering too much by reminding me how many packets I already have. It is so easy to get totally carried away with seed catalogues, overlooking the fact that every packet requires space in the propagator for a pot to sow it, then a tray to prick the seedlings out, then room to stand the young plants when they need potting on, and time to do all that sowing and pricking and potting. But it's a very pleasant way of passing a few winter evenings, imagining all those plants.
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