Seed buying thread 2023

[Zelenina]

Oooh, you did rather go to town there, Snoop Puss but I'm not feeling the least bit guilty as it it looks like a very nice selection, and will hopefully keep you and Mr Snoop healthy and happy.

[Bren In Pots]

A good selection Snoop

[Snoop Puss]

Thanks, guys. I did rather overdo it. But at least I managed to resist buying a packet of every single PSB they had. Impossible to buy here and I love it. I managed to buy summer purple from the Dutch lot, so I'm sorted for long seasons of it.

Bren, I'm still keen for a year-round lettuce growing thread. I bet I wouldn't be the only one.

Edited: Absolutely no need to feel guilty, Zelenina. I'm really grateful you mentioned them.

[rary]

Thanks, guys. I did rather overdo it. But at least I managed to resist buying a packet of every single PSB they had. Impossible to buy here and I love it. I managed to buy summer purple from the Dutch lot, so I'm sorted for long seasons of it.

Bren, I'm still keen for a year-round lettuce growing thread. I bet I wouldn't be the only one.

Edited: Absolutely no need to feel guilty, Zelenina. I'm really grateful you mentioned them.

I think you are right Snoop, it would be good to know how all the diffrent lettuce perform through the year, it's a thread I would not necessarily contribute to, but would follow

[Zelenina]

PSB isn't available here either, but I got a packet of early purple while on my UK visit last summer. I want to find our how well it survives our winters. If it does OK then I might branch out into other varieties.

And on the subject of lettuce, as I said, I generally prefer cos/romaine types for eating. But I've been coming across glowing reports of Marvel of Four Seasons recently, and seeing pictures of it and thinking it's a really beautiful lettuce, even though it's a pretty common variety that I haven't paid much attention to before. So I added it to a couple of my online shopping baskets to find out if it's that good looking in real life. But then today in LIdl I saw packets of it for only 39 cents, so I bought two of them and will now remove it from the baskets.

[Zelenina]

At this time of year it's almost impossible to go shopping without coming home with a few packets of seeds. There are seeds in all the supermarkets here - Lidl and Kaufland and Billa and Tesco, without even going near an actual gardening shop.

So the seeds I came home with this evening, along with the 4 Seasons lettuce, are:

Red basil
Blankyt early purple kohl rabi
Wanda pale green courgette
Medium Leaf chives
Avalon white onion
Brunswijker red onion
Bajkal, Gerda and Freddy - 3 varieties of Japanese/Welsh bunching onions (Allium fistulosum) for a new challenge.
Hungarian goat's horn and cherry chillies (but those aren't for me).
Mixed zinnias
Sunspot sunflowers
Pyrethrum Robinson's which look on the packet like ox-eye daisies in a mix of reds, pinks and white.

About the bunching onions. I've had Shimonita Japanese bunching onions growing in my garden for a number of years, and have been wondering why they weren't multiplying themselves, because I thought that's what they did. In fact they would have disappeared if I hadn't sown some of their seeds to replenish them. I was reading a day or two ago that not all varieties do that, and Shimonita is actually a single-stem variety. So my new challenge is to find one that does multiply. As well as the three I bought today, I already had seeds of Long White Koshigaya, which I think is another non-multiplying type.

Oh, also a piece of Jerusalem artichoke to plant, and a pink Polish tomato to taste. I hope it has more flavour than the Monte Rosa that I tried a couple of weeks ago.

[Snoop Puss]

I think you are right Snoop, it would be good to know how all the diffrent lettuce perform through the year, it's a thread I would not necessarily contribute to, but would follow

Bren In Pots. No pressure, mind...

[Snoop Puss]

Thanks for the reminder, Zelenina. Mr Snoop will be going to a Lidl on Thursday. I'll ask him to look at the seeds. Not that I need anything, mind...

[Bren In Pots]

Bren In Pots. No pressure, mind...

I've renamed the Winter lettuce thread rather than having two threads, just to keep all lettuce in the same place.

Here's the thread.

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...ar-round/page2

[Snoop Puss]

I've renamed the Winter lettuce thread rather than having two threads, just to keep all lettuce in the same place.

Here's the thread.

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...ar-round/page2

Brilliant. I reckon you could have quite a few takers. Thanks for that.

rary, Zelenina, see Bren's thread.

[Zelenina]

Today's trip to the next town wasn't really for shopping but I did go into one supermarket for a few things, and a packet of Lufa seeds somehow managed to get itself into my trolley. (Expiry date 2026 so I don't have to sow them this year.)

[Snoop Puss]

Bought a packet of Half-long Guernsey parsnip seeds. The packet is blazoned with 'for stock'. No-one eats them here. They don't know what they're missing.

[Snoop Puss]

Big thumbs up from me for Seedaholic for members living in the EU. Excellently packed with an accompanying sheet of info for every variety. Will definitely buy from them again.

Thanks for the recommendation Zelenina.

[Zelenina]

I'm glad you're happy with Seedaholic, Snoop Puss. Other life events have been distracting me from gardening and hanging out here, but I eventually put in two seed orders on Good Friday. (What else is there to do on a rainy day when everything is closed?). One is from a Czech company called Culina Botanica, and the other from a German company called Bobby Seeds. Both packages arrived safely, though the Czech ones were faster. Bobby Seeds specialises in Cucurbits but has nice varieties of other stuff as well, while Culina Botanica sells all sorts of things besides seeds.

Here's the Czech list, translated:

• Tromba D'Albenga - squash
• Yellow Crookneck - summer squash
• Jarrahdale - winter squash
• Marvel of Piedmont - dwarf French beans
• Maiko - edible chrysanthemum
• Apricot Beauty - calendula
• Lemon beauty - calendula
• Orange Early Horn - carrots
• Carosello Spuredda Leccese - Italian melon cucumber
• Guernsey - parsnips
• Black Seeded Simpson - lettuce
• And some tomatoes for next year - Blush, Black Cherry and Dívčí prs (an old Czech variety which translates as girl's breast, because it's that sort of shape.)

Snap with the Guernsey, Snoop. Slovaks do sometimes eat parsnips, but they grow and eat much bigger quantities of root parsley.

[Zelenina]

And here's what was in the Bobby Seeds package from Germany

• Oxheart carrot
• Rouge Sang carrot
• Timia pepper (probably for next year)
• Gills Golden Pippin - acorn squash
• Early Straightneck - summer squash
• Nagai cucumber
• Gergana cucumber
• Curly Kale Westlandse Winter
• Fino fennel
• Petrowski turnip
• Golden Midget watermelon