Sunday Afternoon Seed Raising

Time to get some seeds in! I love having masses of floral colour all around the house - near the front door, outside all the windows, pots and pots all over the deck. It looks cheerful and distracts away from all the crappy bits of this old house.

Now, you can go to the garden centre and pay HEAPS for 'pots of colour'. If you are in a hurry, go for your life but it's totally unecesarry. It's more fun doing it like this -


Old seedling trays, seed raising mix, empty soft drink bottles and a few packets of seeds.


Add children



Line the seedling trays with paper. You can see I have used pages of my Tax Pack. I save the newspapers and their endless 'articles' on AFL players and their pneumatic wives for the compost.
Fill the trays with Seed Raising Mix and wet it down, drop the really teeny tiny seeds in (2 rows of 4 for this type of container) and sprinkle more dirt over the top to cover them. Use a spray mist to wet down.

Then cut the tops of the soft drink bottles, fix over the top and you have a mini seed nursery.




I've used an old CD container for the long seed tray. You can get good little setups from the garden shop for about $20 but I like to use what's around the house.

The name of the game is to keep the little fellas warm, so if you have somewhere inside like the laundry or a sunroom you can keep them in there until they sprout.

There is always so much to choose from and it can get overwhelming. It's a good idea to choose a colour theme. That way you can have all different sort of flowers, with a colour theme running through it to keep it all together.

Maybe all yellows and oranges for example. My fave combination for summer are blues and whites - pansies, petunias are easy peasy and give you months of showy brightness.

I usually have no yellow or orange at all and stick to white, pinks and purples, but I cannot resist Sweet William (sometimes called Hearts Ease). They have cheerful little purple and yellow faces bobbing around, and Cyclone has declared them his favourite...

They can take heaps of sun too. I've got Impatiens in as well. They like a bit more shade but I have a place under the plum tree I want to brighten up.

And just in case you are wondering I haven't done any more on the vegie patch. It keeps raining and I have other pressing matters at hand. Like what fabric I should use to recover my dining chairs. Stay tuned because I can't decide and need your help!

Cheers,