Hello, Brendan McDaid here, trying my hand at growing different flowers, some herbs and vegetables from seed. Here I talk about what I have planted, and what has germinated so far and I have a little tip for keeping slugs and snails off your young plants without killing them.
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00:00 Hello, my name is Brendan and I'm starting to sow some seeds here. So I thought I'd start
00:14 a bogie series. Just now it's spring, it's spring 2024 and I thought maybe other people
00:21 will be doing the same. So if you want to come along on the journey that I'm going to
00:26 go on with the seeds. I've started a few weeks ago and I'll be showing today what I've been
00:31 planting and different types of seeds. I'm by no means an expert so there'll be plenty
00:38 of mistakes I'm sure. Some seeds have germinated, some haven't. So I'll just share my experiences
00:44 of starting out as a novice gardener and see where it takes us. Over the next few months
00:52 I'm going to do a weekly series and this is just the introductory one and I'll show you
00:57 just a bit about what I've been planting, how well some things are doing, what I picked
01:03 up along the way and what I had learned from other people as well. And just a few hints
01:10 and a few things not to do as well. So if you want to come along. So here are some of
01:20 the things I'm growing at present and some of the seeds that have been sown just in the
01:25 past few days. So we have here some sage, some broccoli, some marjoram, oregano, basil,
01:37 dill and these are some pots ready for seedlings to be transplanted. And we've also planted
01:47 some godisha, rosemary, thyme and spinach all in this tray, just in little rows of each.
01:58 These ones covered at the moment, they are sweet pea seeds in there. And we have down
02:04 here some sweet pea which I've already sprouted and I've put some twigs in to support them
02:13 as they grow. Sweet pea will climb. And I planted some seeds about two weeks ago and
02:25 stupidly put them in the hot press. I've never grown them before, didn't know what I was
02:30 doing and only four came up out of a combined total of two packets of seeds of about 50
02:38 so this is the other one. So two of each, so I have at least four sweet peas. I have
02:49 some new seeds that came today and these are sucking seeds and the varieties are true fragrance
02:57 mix. Anybody who grows sweet peas will know and I've only ever got them from containers
03:05 as young plants and then planted them out. But they have beautiful fragrance when the
03:12 weather warms up a bit. And the other one is a Spencer special mix so hopefully we'll
03:17 have a nice mix of colours later in the summer and they will grow, the larger ones will grow
03:24 up to about six feet and I'm planning on trailing them up pillars outside my house. So that
03:33 is them. What else am I growing here? Some Larkspur which will produce big spikes of
03:44 blue flowers and different shades of blue and that is these ones here. And then we have
03:54 some flowers called Angel Wings and they are a beautiful rich pink colour flower. And then
04:03 we have some Calendula or Potmari Gold as some people might know them. They produce
04:09 masses of orange and yellow flowers over the summer and they are also, some people might
04:16 not know this but you can eat them and they are also used for ointments and balms. And
04:22 then I have some packets of seeds that were unmarked so I don't know what they are and
04:28 I just threw them in to see if they would grow and we have these tiny little seedlings
04:32 coming up here. So I planted all these ones about a month ago and then here in this tray
04:40 there are some Night Scented Flax which I've never tried to grow before but they have all
04:44 come up very well. Those are Unwound Seeds bought from Dunn Stores and they are ready
04:52 for transplanting in the next few days I would say. They are getting their second set of
04:58 leaves which is the true leaves. So beyond under the table there are some Lupines in
05:06 pots there. They haven't come up yet. They were planted about a few days ago. They haven't
05:11 had much success last year with Lupines so I'm hoping that these ones will germinate.
05:15 Again I was leaving them in the hot press to germinate when really they prefer cooler
05:21 temperatures for germination. I have some plant milk curtains and things here which
05:33 I will use to put sunflower seeds in. I'm cold stratifying sunflower seeds which is
05:39 just a process whereby you soak the seeds, leave them somewhere very cold, hopefully
05:49 they will sprout. It's to mimic the effect of if a seed was lying on the ground that
05:54 it goes through winter in the cold and then germinates in the spring. So hopefully they
05:59 will germinate and I'm also germinating some rosemary that way as well. So some of the
06:07 things you would need to start if you are a novice gardener pretty much like myself.
06:13 I have tried growing a few things with mixed degrees of success in the past. You need some
06:22 pots or just some household containers. Anything that you can put a hole in and drain. I have
06:31 some different pots here. I have some pots that I reuse year on year as well. You also
06:39 need some good compost. This is pretty inexpensive as well. Everything to do with gardening,
06:47 growing from seeds, it's not going to break the bank. It's quite an inexpensive hobby.
06:52 I have some bigger pots here ready and what I've done with them is sometimes make things
07:00 from stained glass and this is the copper foil I would use in stained glass because
07:08 slugs are the bane of most gardeners lives. I don't like killing anything so they don't
07:14 like copper. It gives them a mild shock and then they tend to leave plants alone whenever
07:19 there's copper around them. So that's a handy wee tip there for garden containers. I will
07:26 be planting out in the garden this year as well. We'll see how my nemesis, the slugs,
07:35 get on with the plants. I'm hoping that they'll be a good bit up by then because it's the
07:40 younger plants and more tender plants that tend to be the most at risk from snails and
07:46 slugs. What else have we got now? We have some other seeds as well that I plan to sow.
07:57 Some of these will go straight in the ground because they are seeds that don't take well
08:06 to transplanting. They prefer to be sown directly into the ground. Some of them have tap roots
08:13 which don't like to be disturbed. These ones, Hollyhock, I picked up this week. These are
08:20 producing masses of giant flowers and big giant stalks as well. This one, does it say
08:27 how it will grow? Let's have a look. I've grown these before from seed quite successfully
08:38 actually if I do say so. They came up about 5ft maybe. They were quite sturdy, I was surprised.
08:49 I think I did stake a couple of them because my backyard is very windy. They all flowered
08:54 and they all came up. I'm hoping to see them again. They are a great splash of colour for
08:59 a garden. This is the type of lavender I've sown. They are currently in the fridge, hopefully
09:06 germinating away. This is a Munstead, a variety of English Lavender and they do very well
09:14 here in Ireland. A pile of different herbs here, these are chives and I have garlic chives
09:21 here somewhere as well. Some Swiss chard I'm planning on putting out. Some cornflower seeds.
09:34 These are just a general mix of small growing seeds. I see some cornflower in there as well.
09:45 Some other ones. And then some poppies. These are big Californian poppies. These little
09:54 multi seed packs that I picked up in a discount store as well. So you get 6 small packets
10:02 of seeds in one. Some of these I planted last year, again some of them never sprouted, some
10:09 of them did. This year I planted the Icelandic poppies. They've all come up and the only
10:16 thing is they are notoriously difficult to grow. They are notoriously difficult to get
10:21 to germinate but they have germinated and I could take you outside and show them shortly.
10:28 Then there is these pheasants which I don't know if I will be planting these this year.
10:34 I've read some things that they can take over so I'm kind of wary of that. You have to be
10:40 careful of what you know about planting. You have to research things as well to make sure
10:47 they don't become a monster in your garden. Here is another one of those. I have the sunflower
10:52 seeds in the fridge as I said. Forget me nuts, there's a couple of them germinated. Gorichia
10:59 I only planted. The red poppies too were always sown directly into the soil outside. Here's
11:09 the marigolds. Some of them have come up. The gypsum is just starting to come up, that's
11:17 upstairs in a windowsill. They like petunias as well. I have them up in a windowsill. They
11:24 haven't germinated yet but they need sun to germinate and heat which is not great for
11:29 an Irish weller but we'll see how they get on. And then lovandamist as well which is
11:36 also known as nigella. So I'll be planting that directly in that as well. So we'll go
11:42 out and have a look at the Icelandic poppies here now. This is just some more multi-purpose
11:48 compost. You can buy seed compost but I find it very expensive and especially for smaller
11:55 seeds they can fall through it. Here we have a blackcurrant bush, a blueberry bush which
12:12 I don't know if this will come to life or not, it's not looking great but they require
12:16 a different kind of soil. Here's some calendula and here is the Icelandic poppies. They're
12:25 very tiny so let's see how they come on. So that's it for this edition, the introductory
12:33 edition and I'll be back next week and we'll do an update on how things are going, do a
12:39 demonstration on cold stratification with some lavender and we'll also check up on which
12:48 seeds have germinated, which ones haven't and we'll hopefully have a lot more plants
12:52 outside and I will be able to re-clean my kitchen by that stage. So, signing out.
12:58 [Music]