Archive for the ‘New Seeds’ Category

Update as of 25/01/2011

As it was so successful, thanks everyone, we have to close our Free seeds for schools campaign.

We have given away thousands of packets of vegetable and flower seeds to primary and secondary schools all over the country.

Please visit this page later on (end of summer) possibly for more free seeds!

Thanks for the interest and have a successful growing season.

We offer free vegetable seeds to schools; please send an email to support at seedparade.co.uk; please write seeds for schools in the subject line of the email;  letting us know the address of the school, we will be able to send the free seeds only to the school address! Depending on popularity we will try our best to help everyone, primary schools are our main priority. We will send a selection of 10-15 packets of seeds, suitable for the young growers.

Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis), often called English or garden marigold is most probably native to southern Europe, although its long cultivation history can shade this statement. Commonly grown in every Mediterranean countries and here in the UK too, for centuries.

Marigolds grown as hardy annual flower and can easily self sown so don’t be surprised to have the plants appear the next year. The leaves are oblong, 5-10 cm long, slightly waved or toothed and have tiny hairs.

Cultivated as a flower in many garden, but can be a really useful herb. The seeds can be sown directly outdoors in May, or propagated in the greenhouse from April. The beautiful seedlings alone worth growing these wonderful plants.

The leaves and the petals are edible and used widely in cosmetics, medicines. Pot marigold is a well known and really versatile herb in herbal medicine. It is, above all, a remedy for skin problems and is applied externally to bites and stings. The cosmetic industry uses the extracts in different cosmetics, because the content of saponins and essential oils. The flowers and the leaves are antiseptic. The flowers are used fresh or dried. For drying the petals is best to harvest the flowers when they are fully open. The edible yellow dye in the petals is a saffron substitute and used to colour and flavour rice and soups. The leaves can be used in salads when young.

Pot Marigolds are pungently scented and attract hoverflies (aphid eaters) to your garden. Commonly grown as a companion plant with tomatoes and the marigold will repel the white flies which cause problems in many greenhouses.

Our sweet peas are proving to be very popular. Especially the heirloom mix varieties like our best ever selling  highly scented heirloom mixture of sweet pea. This mixture of peas are specially selected for their perfumed blooms. You can enjoy them in your allotment, garden or even on your patio area. Yes indeed, it is possible to grow them near your house and the strong stems make a great cutting flower too.

Most gardeners sow the sweet peas in March, unless you are a really serious sweet pea lover and sown them in the autumn, but the spring being so late it is not late to sow them at all this month. After a couple of weeks the seedlings should look like these above and by the beginning of May, you will be able to transplant the sweet pea seedlings outside to their final position. So why not give it a go and make your garden nicely perfumed over the summer months.

L. latifolius is the well know perennial sweet pea. Native to Central an Southern Europe and can be found in Japan and in North America where it is an introduced flower. Once it was widely grown in many English garden. Despite its lack of scent it is getting more and more popular again among keen gardeners. The mixture of seeds available are produce white, pink and purple flowers, wich makes a stunning display and give a year after year enjoyment.

The plant is a climber, so best to grow on trellis, on a south facing wall, or you can try to grow them in hanging basket for a cascading effect. Easily grown in any type of soil, but thrives in a well drained rich and warm soil. Prefers a sunny location, perhaps near to your patio where you can enjoy the beautiful flowers all summer long.

The sweet pea seeds can take long time to germinate, you can help the germination by soaking the seeds overnight, but most importantly by keeping the sown seeds in a warm place, at around 20 Celsius and the compost moist at all times. When the seedlings are large enough to handle just prick them out and grow them on at cooler conditions before planting out the strong and established plants to their final position. Choose their location carefully and support the plants as they grow or they can be left to grow as they wish if you have a wild corner in your garden.

The plants can reach a height of 2 metre and more and will need some attention or they will take over your whole garden.

Cherokee purple tomato was widely grown in South America by the Cherokee Indians. The colour of the fruits is deep purple, dark red with green neck. Exceptionally good taste, in fact considered by many the best tasting tomato ever. Well the Russian black prince tomato and the black krim tomato are up for that title too, you just have to grow them and see the results yourself.

It is one of the most famous black/purple tomatoes. Well in coloration the black tomatoes really only purple, we can not expect a heirloom tomato to be black really. The fruits are quite large, rather beefsteak style, and the taste is really worth growing these lovely tomatoes.

What is heirloom you might ask. Well heirloom has many definitions, and by experts it is considered that all the varieties which can be traced back to the 1950s could be described as a heirloom variety. They are definitely open pollinated, which means that you can save the seeds from the fruits and the next generation will be the same as the previous one. While with the hybrid varieties it is not the case, but that is the subject of an other post. So if you want to try one of the most flavoursome heirloom tomatoes out there, we have a few in our shop. Pink Brandywine, Black Krim just to name a few.