In comparison with other regions, our winters in Ireland and across the water in Scotland, England and Wales are considered relatively mild which means there are a lot of hardy flowering plants and some quick growing vegetables you can start now and get growing for a late autumn harvest and early spring colour next year.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Good morning, today I'm just going to be sowing some seeds. It's September and there's certain
00:18seeds you can sow in overwinter outdoors, certain ones you can't. The frost will make
00:25these die back but the roots will be alive underneath. Today I'm going to be sowing some
00:30seeds from 2012. These were my father's seeds. My father died 10 years ago and a few years
00:40after he died we found all these seeds in a box. So I'm going to try and see if any
00:46of them will come up. The expiry date was, not that one, 2012 on all of them. So these
00:56were seeds he never got to plant and I'm hoping they maybe, see if any of them come up. It's
01:02a slim chance because they're so old but we have, what we have here is some radishes,
01:08two different types of radishes, some beetroot and some spring onion. My father was a keen
01:14gardener himself and liked trying things, vegetables especially. He had an allotment
01:22too at one point. So what I've done here is I've pre-soaked some trays that are actually
01:31soaking at the moment. These are individual cells and then I have just normal trays as
01:37well for seeds. This is just good quality, very crumbly compost. I'm just going to press
01:50them down here. What I'm going to do is just use the bottom of a pen to make a wee hole
01:56in each one. I'll just take the seeds down here and explain what I'm sowing where in
02:09a moment. So some of these seeds are vegetables, some are flowers and they're all kind of hardy
02:20enough ones that should, in theory anyway, survive the cold. There's a hard butt, you
02:27don't want that in your seed compost. I'll leave that to one side and put it in the garden.
02:36Hard butts can stop the delicate young root from advancing downwards.
02:49So this compost is already pretty moist, it's been sitting in the water for the past 10 minutes.
02:57Somebody's chopping wood next door if you hear a bit of banging.
03:00Let's see, so under this one we'll put beetroot.
03:06Says expiry December 2012, so that's 12 years ago now. So we'll see anyway
03:14how they get on. And that's the seeds, they're quite big seeds,
03:20and there's a lot of them. So I'll maybe put two in each
03:23in each cell. What I'll do with the pen now, put one in each corner as well.
03:46Oh, there's two in that hole. I may have to treble these up anyway because there's so many of them.
04:07I still have probably most of the packet here, but I'm going to just put them back in and see
04:12if anything comes of these ones to start with. That should be a good indicator whether these
04:17seeds or any of these seeds are still viable. And then I'm just going to, now that they're
04:23in the hole, close over the holes, just with my finger. And I'll spray these in just to give them
04:31a final watering in so that they're in good contact with the soil. So now we're entering
04:39more familiar territory, which is flowers. And one herb I think I'm going to plant today as well,
04:47which is garlic chives. Now these are newer seeds. Planted a few of these very early in the year,
04:55but they didn't do too well, so I'm going to try them again. For
05:01this one I'm going to use, I don't have very many trays left, so I'm going to use
05:10the same tray for maybe three or four different things. I don't want to be planting too many
05:15seeds either, because I've nowhere to put them. And they survive frost and everything outside.
05:21The other one, the other ones I'm growing are some Honesty, some Lunaria. I have some of these
05:29that I planted earlier in the year that are biennial, so they'll flower next year.
05:33Then you get those big silvery, moon-like seed pods. Great for cut dried flowers, or even just
05:41some drama in the autumn in the garden. But these will all be for next year anyway. Then on top of
05:48that we have some Dwarf Cornflowers. Had really good success with normal Cornflowers this year,
05:55so I'm going to try the Dwarf variety. Sweet William, another one. I've already planted
06:01half this packet earlier in the year, and they're growing away in the ground. They will flower
06:05early in the spring, but I thought if I plant more now, they will, it'll keep the flowering
06:12season going. When the other ones die off, these will be coming into bloom hopefully.
06:16See if they come up. And then we also have the Love in a Mist. I didn't plant this specifically
06:26this year, but I did plant some dried flower, just a mix of dry flower seeds. The ones that you use
06:32for cutting and arrangements. And amongst them, the ones that came up were Nigella, Love in a Mist.
06:40In front of me to you, I didn't mention. This is some Baby's Breath seeds that I collected from
06:47the ones I grew from seeds earlier in the year. And it said somewhere you can grow these too
06:52in September, so I'll try them anyway. I'm not sure if they're cold frost or cold hardy, frost
06:59hardy, but we'll try and get them on the ground anyway, like before winter sets in proper.
07:07In terms of what I'm going to do here, is just going to make wee drills
07:11in the soil, just with a pen, and then just fold them over. So
07:16there's one, two, three, four. Just lift that up so you can see what I'm doing there.
07:29And these aren't very deep, but
07:34it just makes it easier in the end when you're putting the labels in, you know what's what.
07:39I'm not, as I said, I'm not sowing all these seeds, just some of each.
07:43First up, I think we'll try and keep all the ones that are gonna need to stay inside first, to germinate.
07:57So these are the Sweet William.
08:00The Sweet William.
08:09I feel a bit sully now.
08:13This one was the Dwarf.
08:23Cornflowers.
08:26I've got a brain freeze there.
08:31I have an honesty one already written out, so I can stick that in there.
08:37The one we just did was Fast Glove. Do I have one for this? I don't.
08:49I'll have to see if I can find some more labels here.
09:01This is Strawberries and Sage. So I've just reused these many times,
09:18like these are ones that are already written on, so Fast Glove.
09:21That's in there.
09:32So next up, we'll get the Nigella on.
09:47And these little multi-packs too are great, because you don't get a massive amount of
09:55seeds, but you get a good deal, and they seem to be as good as any of the expensive seeds that you buy.
10:05So I'm not sure, I might actually put some of these back, because there's probably around
10:1240 seeds in there, and I might plant some in the spring as well.
10:18Yep, that's Grand.
10:22These are beautiful flowers, and the seed heads are incredible on them too, so a great one for
10:32dried flower displays or bouquets.
10:37And I will show you some of the seed heads in a wee while. I'll take you around and show you
10:41how some of these things are looking at the moment, for the ones I have.
10:47Next up,
10:54I want to keep, ah, that's what I wanted to do. So I'm going to keep the Icelandic
11:02poppies and the Oriental poppies. I'll try and put them in their own tray I think, because they are
11:07quite, they have quite a different growing habit, and they need to be outside really.
11:16So we have the garlic chives here, and there's,
11:20I've also some more hollyhock too that I'm going to be planting today, but I'll do them,
11:24they're quite big seeds, so they will need their own.
11:31So we'll get the garlic chives in now.
11:33Right,
11:36I haven't planted none of these have I? God knows.
11:54That's the one.
11:57I wasn't, I didn't think there would be so many things that you can plant at this time of year.
12:03But apparently so. I'll just use up the rest of those too.
12:10There seems to be quite a bit. Hopefully now it all works.
12:15Now lastly in this one, I'm going to plant
12:20some more fast cloves in there. Maybe keep them, there's a couple more there.
12:27Lastly I've been collecting seeds, and I'll do a video on collecting seeds. I could
12:31as more flowers die off. But these are baby's breath, and these were just ones I grew from
12:40seed earlier in the year. I'm putting the seed tusks and everything in here, because they're
12:46so tiny, the seeds, you can't really separate them. I've gone through and sort of squeezed them out.
12:52And there's a million more as well, but these also make really good dry flowers as well.
12:59Apparently, so maybe something we'll look at.
13:08Put the rest in here.
13:10All right, so that's everything, and then I just need to close these over now.
13:26I must get some more leaves, because I've seen they've run out, and
13:38I know there's other ones out in the garden, too, that are in pots that I no longer need them for.
13:45I think after you get used to certain leaves, too, you can, certain distinctive leaves,
13:50you can take them out, too, and reuse them, the likes of lupine and stuff like that.
13:58That's grand, I mean, you just drill over these.
14:01Following the ditch.
14:14So, as you can see here, the greenhouse is full of leaves.
14:18I'm going to go ahead and put a few more out there.
14:20So, as you can see here, the greenhouse has already fallen up again.
14:35I'm afraid I got my money's worth out of this £30 greenhouse this year, anyway.
14:40A plastic job, and on here, that's the lavender I grew from seed earlier in the year,
14:47and then Chinese lanterns, some pheasants, native Irish wildflower that's endangered,
14:56more Chinese lanterns, and then this one is one of the three types of Canterbury bells.
15:04These will need transplanted pretty soon, looking very healthy there. Here is more of them, and
15:10a couple of winter pansies, too. More of the red pheasants, eh? In the back is some younger
15:19Canterbury bells, and then here we have a few hollyhock. Something's been at this, these two,
15:26so they're particularly vulnerable, they slogs and snails when they're young.
15:33And then here we have
15:42quite a lot of these actually, like there's ones down here I've given away a lot to,
15:47and these are Columbine, or Aquilegia, or Granny's Bonnet, sort of old
15:54perennial, old paddy's favourite, like you don't see that often anymore, and there's more of them
16:00again down there. Kind of shamrock-like leaf, really pretty, and more hollyhock, lupins, and
16:12more, there's the winter pansies there, they've gotten a bit dry there, I'll have to water them,
16:17and they look ready to transplant on as well. More Columbine, and in there we have some new
16:24lavender growing as well. So that's everything that's in here, there's not much room for
16:29anything else, so I wasn't sure where I'm going to put these outdoor ones for now, because even
16:34the buns are getting covered. This is more Canterbury Bells, up here we have some of the
16:44rosemary that I grew from seed, some lettuce, more lettuce inside, and we have more rosemary, I need
16:53to give half this stuff away, because I've nowhere to put it. More Canterbury Bells, it's a mixture
16:59of leftovers, seedlings, down here we have wallflowers, which will flower next year,
17:05they've been there about a month and a half old now, more lupins, more hollyhock,
17:12more Canterbury Bells, and here's some of the
17:20the Swiss chard, and you can see the different coloured stems, this is a red one, this is a
17:25yellowish one, some of that's bolting now, I'm going to seed, but this is really nice in a salad,
17:33or you can cook it as well, like spinach, but I was going to show you, I'm getting carried away here.
17:38This is the Anastie that we just planted, a bit of moss trying to find a home in there, but as you
17:46can see the big heart-shaped leaf, it looks a bit battered here at the moment, but I'm going to get
17:52that in the ground, because there's seven or eight of them in here, and they needed, they needed far
17:56more room, they should have been on ages ago, but I want to wait till the flowers die back, so I can start
18:00pulling the angles out, and then work the ground a bit, add a bit more compost, and then start,
18:06and then the other things grew this year, that just, that we've just started sowing are,
18:14these are normal size cornflowers, and we've just planted some miniature cornflower seeds,
18:21and here we have the hollyhock, that I'm going to be planting in a minute,
18:26you can see the size of these flowers,
18:29and there's a one over here, that's about seven foot, if you see it there, most of this might be,
18:34there's a nice white one, and a darker pink one as well, these are singles, the double ones are
18:40more rosette like, a few more here growing, so we'll get more of them in the ground,
18:47and hopefully by the time winter comes, or even in pots maybe,
18:58things in pots seem to survive much better, and nothing's in need any of them, when you put the
19:04copper foil on it, and then the last thing I wanted to show you here was, well the last two things
19:10actually, is first up, this is loving a must, and these are the seed heads, and do we have any
19:19still flowering, yeah here's one, they're all dying away now at the moment, here's one we
19:27loving the most here, this light blue, and amongst the one everlasting, and then we have these
19:33amazing seed heads, that you can use for dried flowers,
19:39with these long stems, and these ferny kind of leaves, very unusual looking plant, but
19:43grows very well here, I hear some other ones growing as well,
19:52and
19:58the last thing I wanted to show you was the Sweet William that I planted earlier in the year,
20:03and these are biennials obviously, that will come up
20:10in the spring, with a mass of flowers, these are Araucalymix, which is the sort of bi-coloured ones,
20:18let's see what else there is here,
20:23so there's a mass of them, but they're all in, I'm going to dig them out I think,
20:26and put them in the pots, because I do want to work the soil over, but there's also a few
20:33we're all kind of hidden here at the moment, but there's a few more honestly on the ground here as
20:37well, so I may try and work around them, but that is everything there for that, well it's been a
20:45week, and I just wanted to show you that some of the old seeds, my father's seeds have grown,
20:51and these are the radishes, the French breakfast radishes,
20:56they're the first to come up, maybe the only ones that come up, but I'm very chuffed with that,
21:01and I just want to show you as well, these are the baby's breath, that
21:09had been grown from seed earlier in the year, and now they're going to seed, so I took some of the
21:15seed heads, squeezed out the seeds, planted them, and after a week they are all germinating,
21:24all germinating, there are probably a few hundred on here, not what I expected at all,
21:30but just shows you how fresh seeds, compared to the others which have, that they germinate,
21:36and there's four different varieties on here of seeds, but these are the only fresh ones I planted,
21:42and they've all come up as well.