Looked in my seed tin and found left from last year...........
Plenty of Chard
Very few Tomato -Super Mama
Enough Butternut Squash -Hunter
A dozen or so Sweetcorn - Moonshine
Plenty of Leek - Neptune
Very few Red Sweet "Pointy" Peppers
2 or 3 Sweet orange block pepper - Kubista
Very Few Aubergine - Genie
2 or 3 Cucumber- Louisa
3 or 4 Courgette - Tuscany
Climbing French bean seeds saved from 2019 and 2020} Decided it was time to start afresh
Few Runner bean seed saved from who knows when } with both sorts of beans in 2023
I perused the seed catalogues......... I love reading all the different descriptions and finding out about new varieties each year.
Seed prices have gone up a lot since covid and vary from one company to another as do the number of seed in a packet. I straight away abandoned Thompson & Morgan as they didn't have much choice (perhaps this wasn't their full catalogue) .The D.T Brown catalogue had everything I wanted but many of their packets were 50p+ more than those in the Marshalls catalogue. Kings didn't have any of the tomatoes I wanted but their prices were significantly less than both the others.
I decided that even if I had to pay postage on two different orders it would still be cheaper to get most things from Kings and just the tomatoes from Browns.
To add to what I have left I'm going to be buying .............
Super Mama and Sun Grape tomatoes.
Incredible Sweetcorn
Thor and Kubista Peppers
Aubergine Genie
Cucumber Pepinex
Courgette Defender
Cobra Climbing French Beans
Benchmaster Runner Beans
Beetroot Moneta - they will come from Browns too as they are a Monogerm variety so I should be easier to spread out when sowing. Kings don't have any Monogerm.
I'm not bothering with things that are easy and cheap to buy - carrots and onions. Or lettuces which need regular sowing and I don't eat enough for when they all grow at once.
That's probably all I'll have room for in the greenhouse and 3 vegetable beds although I might find some Kale plants later in the year and attempt to keep them free of critters - which was a total fail this year.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
Same process here only online. T&M own Suttons and OrganicSeeds so they are pretty much all the same now. F uses Real Seeds and Sow Seeds for exotic stuff and gets most of her ordinary stuff from Wilko (75p or £1) per packet and 3 for price of 2 right now.
ReplyDeleteThat is one thing I don't have much patience for, trawling through catalogues comparing like with like and prices. You'll have lots of work to keep you occupied when they arrive.
ReplyDeleteI do not do much with seeds, so I buy locally my little garden doesn't hold much.
ReplyDeleteCathy
Your garden sounds outstanding. Growing with seeds has been a big fail for me. The one exception was when a brick layer worked on my fireplace chimney and he shared bags of his extra tomatoes. He told me to save the seeds, freeze them and plant them in May. These tomatoes actually grew. I still have his seeds in my freezer. Must plant them soon.
ReplyDeleteI only need to buy some Courgette seeds this year as I have all the seeds that came in my Advent calendar. I'm sure I should have had courgette seeds as there were two packs of something else and there are instructions for growing courgettes in the little handbook that was in envelope number 25!
ReplyDeleteMay be it is time to save our own seeds and see what happens. So many things are hybrids now I don't know if it is possible.
ReplyDeleteI once planted Chinese long beans (pole variety) abt 5 years after expiration date -- got 90%+ germination rate. You could try sprouting bean seeds on a paper towel to see how viable they are, if you wish to save some pennies!!
ReplyDelete