As the winter months are often not as busy in the garden, many of us spend this time planning what to grow this year or carrying out prep and maintenance work. When choosing your seeds and plants, I’d like to tempt you to think about the seed stage of your plants too. Which is easy to overlook, but what a missed opportunity that is!
Beauty: Winter can be a time when the seedheads in our garden really get their chance to stand out. With less foliage and hardly any flowers, the beauty of seedheads can provide structure and visual interest. And when the frost hangs on them especially it’s a magical sight.
So, although it probably feels like a long time away, choose some plants now that will develop beautiful seedheads next winter. Honesty for example, which is probably more known for its papery, white circle seedheads than for its flowers. Teasels, wild carrots or the red berries of holly will all give you beauty or colour next winter too. And below is a photo of drumstick scabious seeds hanging down to dry. Aren’t they gorgeous?
Wildlife: Last year’s sunflowers in my garden still carry some seeds and I can often watch birds nibbling on the seeds while hanging off the flowers. For winter bee-food, you could also grow hellebores, heather or snowdrop and other nectar-rich plants . When there’s not so much else about, wildlife really depends on these sources of food and shelter. Just as much as I depend on this source of joy in watching them!
Seed saving: Now is the perfect time to think about starting your seed saving journey or growing it to the next level. Are there any seeds you’d like to have a go at saving for the next year? If so, do you need to take any preparations? For example you may want to grow a few extra plants so you have spare plants that you can let go to seed or you may need to allocate some extra space to accomodate the larger space a plant in seed may take up. But most of all don’t overthink it, and just give it a go.
If you’ve never collected any seeds before, you could start with peas (read below for a tip on pre-sprouting), honeywort, sunflowers, phacelia, tomatoes or basil. As these are all easy plants to collect seeds from. Maybe grow a few extra so you can bring them along to next year’s seed swap!
Quick tip on pre-sprouting peas
Pre-sprouting or pre-germination gives peas an early start. Soak the seeds for up to 24 hours and then place them on some damp kitchen roll or cotton wool in some Tupperware. Cover with another layer of damp kitchen roll and seal the container with its lid or by placing it in a sandwich bag.
Make sure to open up the container every couple of days to let fresh air in, and over the course of a week your seeds should have swollen and started to sprout a root and a shoot!
You can leave them in the container until you see green on the shoot, and make sure to check for mould regularly. Plant the seeds about an inch deep in root trainers or pots, being careful not to damage the root.
