Sowing Late Summer/Autumn Seeds || Special Guest Presenter

Hi everyone, it's Jeanette here again from Enthusiastic Gardener, thank you so much for joining me because in this video we have a very special guest presenter showing us all about how to grow plants from seed, and her name is Fiona, Fiona Brightman, she lives in Kent, which we call the Garden of England because it is such a beautiful county. Fiona and I have become good friends from the Enthusiastic Gardener Facebook page, Fiona asked me very recently, Jeanette I'm really interested to know what you are going to be growing for autumn and winter seed wise, and I said Fiona, I'm really ashamed to say that I have never ever grown anything from seed, and you will probably think, well, call yourself a gardener, you've never grown anything from seed, and I absolutely agree, and it is something that I want to do, but I always thought, well, I haven't got a greenhouse, so how am I going to keep them going, well, Fiona has a mini greenhouse, and this is a picture of her mini greenhouse, so what she does is she uses that, she doesn't put it out in the full sun, what she would do is she would put it in the shade, because she says that it would get plenty of light that way, you don't need to have something right in the sun, and then what she does is, when she's out pottering in the garden, she puts the seeds outside on a table to just acclimatise a little bit more, makes them grow stronger and sturdier, and then she pops them back in the greenhouse, so I need to find a little mini greenhouse, I am going to go online and find myself one, the other thing that Fiona gave me as a good tip was, we have a shop called Wilko's over here in England, and they sell off their seeds really cheaply, she gets all her packets of seeds for 20 or 30 pence each, which is a marvellous idea, so I am going straight down to Wilko's after I have been online to find my mini greenhouse, this year, amongst other things, she grew delphiniums, which she said flowered wonderfully, she's now cut them down, they're back in the greenhouse now to overwinter, ready for planting out again next year, and she has already sown seeds for pink and white echinaceas, blue cornflowers, lupins and calendulas, so she is well ahead of the game, so anyway I said Fiona please will you share with us how you do your seeds, because I need to know so that I can get started, so she has really kindly agreed to do that for us, and let's hand over to Fiona now. Hi guys, my name is Fiona and I'm one of Jeanette's followers on the Enthusiastic Gardener, and on her Facebook page she asked me if I'd do a video on some of the seeds that I have been sowing recently, so I've decided to show you these seeds, these ones are calendula dozy mixed, and I picked these up in Wilkinson's in the sale recently during August, and I picked this packet up for 30p, and I'm quite pleased because the calendulas, these ones you can sow during August to October, so we're well within the time frame. These will flower May to October next year, and they will grow to about 20cm, and they're great for pollinators, and I really love the colour of the daisy flowers, it's a nice lemon colour. On the back it does say to sow quite thinly, which I will do in this already prepared seed tray, and then I will cover very lightly with soil, and I've already got a bottle prepared here, I have rainwater in this bottle, and as Jeanette has said in one of her previous videos, rainwater is the best, so I'll give them a soak in once I've pressed them down with that. One thing I will say, always put your label in your seed tray because once they've germinated, you won't remember what they are, and we've got a nice little label here. Alright, here we go. So here are the seeds, they look rather unusual, and I did actually see on a previous post somewhere that someone said they are like dragon claws, and I suppose they do, they're rather unusual. So here we go, and they're quite easy to handle as well, so I'm just going to pop them in here, not too close together, and also I like to factor in that there could possibly be a failure rate with some of these seeds, so I like to do a few extra. Alright, so there we go, a few in there. So I've got some compost in here, I'm just going to sprinkle it lightly on the top, like so, and I'm also doing this inside my kitchen because the weather is horrendous, we've had high winds and a lot of rain. Right, I'm just using this little pot to press them down, and I'm just going to give it a little squirt with my rainwater bottle. The compost that was in there was already quite damp, and now I'm spraying it with water, it's going to activate the seedlings. So there we go, pretty straightforward, have it all pressed down. I'm going to pop the label on, just pop that there, and I have a lid. So I'm going to keep these inside just until they germinate, I like to keep an eye on them on the inside, and then I will move them outside into my greenhouse. So that is that. What I'd also like to show you, these are some calendula seedlings. I sowed these in a seed tray a couple of weeks ago, they germinated within three days and they grew rapidly. And what I've done, I've taken a few out and I've put them in some pots, and I found because they're quite big, it's just easier to put them round the edge of the pot so they get a little bit of support. But these are actually in my greenhouse outside, and they've been outside for about a week, and they are absolutely fine. And there's lots of seeds you can sow this time of year. These ones are Candyman Orange, but there's other calendulas you can sow. You have the Orange King, if you like orange flowers. This Yellow Peony Poppy, you can sow those now. And I've also got Pansy, the Swiss Giant Mix, and Violas, you can sow those now. The Pansy Swiss Giant Mix, you can only sow them up to the end of August, roughly. But there's a few selections for you. These ones will flower next year, the Violas and the Pansies will flower during the winter months at some point. So there you go, I hope that was useful for you. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much Fiona, that was amazing, and now there is no excuse for me not to get out there and to get going with seeds, and I really will give it a go. If anyone else would like to send videos or tips or anything at all, this is your channel as much as it is mine, so I'm happy to share and collaborate with anyone who wishes to do so. Get in touch with me, the best way is probably on the Facebook page, The Enthusiastic Gardener, and we will sort something out. In the meantime, this Sunday will be the September subscriber video montage, and thank you to everyone who has been sending in videos and pictures of everything that has happened in your garden in August. Keep sending them to me, I just keep them all and batch them all up and then make another video for the first Sunday of every month. And we have approached September already, my goodness, the year is flying past. Hope you're having fun in your gardens, thank you so much for watching, thank you Fiona, and I will see you all again very soon. Bye!