Watch Monty as he sows seed of self-blanching celery variety ‘Tall Utah’. Learn how and when to sow and transplant, as he guides you through the steps to get the best results from this delicious crop.
Sowing seed of salad leaves in lengths of guttering can help keep your seedlings safe from slugs and snails, and enable you to transplant the whole row into the soil as and when soil space becomes available. Short, 1m lengths of guttering are convenient and easy to handle. When the salad seeds germinate, simply grow them on for two to four weeks and then slide the plants into their final growing positions.
If you’re looking to grow flowers for vibrant summer colour, look no further than zinnias. With so many zinnia varieties available, it’s no wonder they’re such a popular cut flower. Zinnias can be sown indoors from February to April, but can also be sown outside in May. Just choose a fertile, weed-free area, whether it’s a gap in a border or a patch of bare soil, and get sowing. Once they’re in bloom you can expect a profuse display of summer colour up until the first autumn frosts.
Tall lettuces such as ‘Bionda’ or hearting lettuces like ‘Webb’s Wonderful’ are best started off in seed modules – they will grow into neat, easy-to-handle plug plants that you can plant out in the garden at a later date. Find out how to grow salad leaves in a container. Here’s how to start off salad seeds in modules.
Sowing a green manure on bare soil in autumn is a great way to improve its structure and fertility. It prevents nutrients from being washed out of bare soil, deters weeds from germinating and improves soil structure. Sown directly, the resulting young leafy plants are later dug back into the soil in spring, giving it a boost. In this clip from Gardeners’ World, Monty Don demonstrates how to sow grazing rye grass as a green manure, and explains how to use it to incorporate back into the soil: