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Autumn sowing up North
I wish there was a forum category for Beginners 🙂 which I am
Read a fair bit about autumn sowing of hardy annuals direct and under cover, and I have everything here to give it a go. The only thing that I am not sure about... I live up North. Gales from autumn on, the weather can be rough.
With spring sowing you need to wait a week or two, that makes sense, as the soil will be later to warm up. But what with autumn sowing, maybe you need to sow a week or two *before* the rest of the country? Eg August instead of September? While it is still reasonably mild.
Also instructions never say what to do with the new seedlings to overwinter them. Can they just be planted out to overwinter in the garden? Or can I keep them in an unheated room in my house? I have no greenhouse and no cold frame ( however I think I could lay my hand on a fishbox with a transparant sheet?)
The seeds which I have should al be easy.
DIRECT calendula, californian poppy, cornflower, love in a mist, viola
UNDER COVER scabiosa, camille, euphorbia, parsley, viola
Very excited about this new sowing project, want to be prepared and do a good job !!! 🤗🤔
Read a fair bit about autumn sowing of hardy annuals direct and under cover, and I have everything here to give it a go. The only thing that I am not sure about... I live up North. Gales from autumn on, the weather can be rough.
With spring sowing you need to wait a week or two, that makes sense, as the soil will be later to warm up. But what with autumn sowing, maybe you need to sow a week or two *before* the rest of the country? Eg August instead of September? While it is still reasonably mild.
Also instructions never say what to do with the new seedlings to overwinter them. Can they just be planted out to overwinter in the garden? Or can I keep them in an unheated room in my house? I have no greenhouse and no cold frame ( however I think I could lay my hand on a fishbox with a transparant sheet?)
The seeds which I have should al be easy.
DIRECT calendula, californian poppy, cornflower, love in a mist, viola
UNDER COVER scabiosa, camille, euphorbia, parsley, viola
Very excited about this new sowing project, want to be prepared and do a good job !!! 🤗🤔
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None of the varieties you mention need heat, but they all need good light.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Things like cornflower and nigella for example, are better sown direct in late spring/early summer. Ground is more favourable then, as well as temps.
For any plant - you need to look at how and when it naturally reproduces. That gives you an idea of when to sow. We often get asked on the forum about foxgloves for example. People want to keep them in greenhouses which is totally unnecessary. They're wild plants which grow in all sorts of inhospitable conditions.
No small seedling planted out in the ground is going to do well over winter, so even if you have any, you need a cold frame/greenhouse or similar to over winter them. Light, not heat, as @punkdoc says.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
In the depths of the winter there is maybe only 6 hours or so of daylight.
Will that make it impossible to do any autumn sowing? How disappointing!
Never thought of this...
We get about 6 hours here.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Direct sowing does not work for me, cold, wet and to many pigeons.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
OK that is maybe a bit les than 6 hours of daylight in winter, now that I think of it. More like 5. But by then the seeds (seedlings?) should be in a semi dormant state, right?
Do you do autumn sowing of hardy annuals?
punkdoc, it will be very wet and cold here too.
Can you sow anything inside, even if the instructions are to sow direct in the garden?
I rarely sow any autumn seeds here. Pointless. I don't do a lot of annuals anyway, but I do sweet peas, but it's rarely worth sowing in autumn. It's never very favourable for planting out in spring anyway, so I usually just do them in April. I did some last year, and we had an abnormally hot April, so I actually had sweet peas flowering in late June for the first time ever.
I don't think it's worth doing any in autumn where you are, unless you have a cold frame of some kind. You can easily make a basic one with bricks, blocks etc, and a bit of perspex or polycarbonate. You'd still need to wait for conditions to be favourable enough to plant out in spring, and you'll have to be prepared for some failures.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
I am very new to gardening, you see.
If I would sow them now in modules on my window sill, and then later pot them on and move them to the window sill of an unheated room - would that be too dark for them? Then hopefully wait until June to plant them in the garden?
Yes I could probably get a fishbox and use a perspex sheet as a lid. I could use that after keeping them in the unheated room and before moving them into the garden?