Germination Ideas, Tips & Guides

Not only for the flax seeds, but you can grow flax for its beautiful blue flowers. Growing this plant is not difficult in pots!

Vinegar is a natural product and has hundreds of uses in the home. But do you know it can make gardening easier for you? Have a look at the best Vinegar Uses in the Garden that you must have never heard of before.

Plant propagation is the easiest way to grow an extensive garden by multiplying the mother plant into several cloned varieties that take weeks to develop. But if you want to speed up the process, learn How to Use Vodka to Propagate Plants and brainstorm your gardening journey!

If you are looking for new tips and tricks to stimulate seed germination? The Smoke Germination Technique may be just what you need to grow plants easily!

Planting and Growing Rye does not involve special care, and having it indoors will give you a beautiful ornamental plant! Here’s everything you need to know about How to Grow Rye Grass!

Beets are one of the fast-growing vegetables, and if you’ve grown other root vegetables like radishes or carrots, then growing beets in pots is not much different.

Many plants in nature grow where it suits them. A seed falls on the ground, quickly produces a sprout without any human intervention. All those seeds that do not fall off on the fertile ground never germinate. Similarly, when a gardener sow seeds they require the optimum growing medium to germinate. An optimal seed starting mix creates the best conditions for this journey.

Whether you’re a beginner gardener or a seasoned pro, these fast growing flowers are easy to cultivate and require minimal maintenance, making them a popular choice for gardeners who don’t wait a lot. So stop waiting and scroll below to explore some of the best Flowers that Grow Quickly from Seeds.

Wondering what the top gardening tips that you might be missing are? Check out the best Hacks Master Gardeners Would Never Tell anyone, but we will!

Heaths and heathers are popular evergreen shrubs in the Ericaceae family, beloved in temperate gardens for their flower and foliage colors, spreading habit, and easy care.And they propagate readily wi

Here are some valuable Vinegar Hacks for Indoor Plants that you can use without any worries as it is a completely safe, natural product!

Red Fern Plants are a stunning addition to any home or garden, with their striking color and graceful fronds. However, like other plants, they require proper attention to thrive. Let’s see how to take care of them!

If you are passionate about gardening and have a small space but want to have a greenhouse, this post is for you. With these Mini Greenhouse ideas, nothing will stop you from growing everything you wish during unfavorable conditions. These ideas are more useful for those who are city dwellers and have a limited space garden.

I’m very disappointed with my first sowing of the much-heralded new blight-resistant tomato ‘Losetto’.  While the other varieties achieved between 80-100% germination, I have a solitary Losetto i.e. 10%.  It was sown

Follow our guide to learn everything about Growing Tamarind in Pots to enjoy its sour-sweet fruit, or add an appeal by keeping it as an ornamental bonsai.

Salad Days Soon I’ve started sowing salads of varying sorts in my cold greenhouse and a couple of warm days has had them germinating. I stand the pots in a polystyrene fish box and cover them with fleece if really cold weather threatens, but generally I find that the greenhouse is all the protection they need.

Regular followers will know that I am a fan of Nicotiana mutabilis, but they are not the easiest plants to germinate. I’ve only managed to raise three plants this year, along with another three that made it through the mild winter. As back up, I ordere

My young tomato plants are now growing so fast that I have had to move them out from under the Gro Light because some of the tallest leaves had got a bit scorched.  I will continue to give them bottom heat un

Many gardeners store large quantities of grass seed in the shed or garage, to reseed any bare spot in the lawn. But what about their expiry date? Let’s find out does grass seeds go bad or remain workable for a long time to come!

Sowing Sweet Peas I do like to sow my sweet peas in late autumn so that I can start picking them in June – and if I had enough space I would do another sowing in March to extend the picking season – but it is tricky enough as it is to find room for the autumn plants. Sowing in autumn means that if I do have any germination problems, I can resow.

The next month is the time to get on with sowing seeds if you want to extend the growing season with fresh herbs, autumn and winter salads as well as perpetual spinach and chard. It is essential to get on with sowing before light levels and temperatures drop and days shorten – after that leafy crops either fail to germinate, damp off, or concentrate on growing strong root systems and save leaf production for next spring. I’m going to have a go at growing red-leaved and green chicory this winter and am going to root watercress (from a bunch bought at the greengrocer’s) to grow in a pot that I will stand in a deep saucer of water in the greenhouse. This is a method recommended by garden designer Bunny Guinness. I love the idea of picking my own watercress. Sow some f

Travels over for the moment, it is time to get on with sorting out the garden.  When the weather is neither too cold nor too wet, I’ve started tidying the flower beds, removing the old plant supports and cutting back the dead stems on perennials. As I work, I am tucking up the newly tidied areas with a mulch of composted bark or Strulch depending on their preference – usually bark for woodland plants and Strulch for the borders. I do a small area at a

Having the heated propagator in the greenhouse has made all the difference to my seed sowing. No more lanky seedlings grown on the kitchen windowsill. As soon as they hav

The latest issue of Gardening Which includes trials carried out re-using growbags and potting compost. These achieved

Growing lemon from seeds is truly easy, and you can even do it in something as small as a tea or a coffee cup! Let’s have a look at what else you need to do this.

Sorting Old Seeds If you have opened packets of seeds left over from last year (or even further back) it’s useful to know which will still germinate well and which won’t.  Of course it all depends how they have been stored, but the following list will give you a fairly good idea. How long will seeds keep ? Beetroot                      4 years Brassic

Tree Squash When a few squash plants germinated in one of my compost heaps I decided to let them be. There was an enormous amount of leaf growth and the stems were soon reaching up and over the adjoining 4 metre high Euonymus but I couldn’t see any sign of fruit.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) has an extra oxygen atom than water (H2O), which breaks down, and the molecule of water releases from this separately. It is this extra oxygen atom that makes it so valuable for horticulture. Let’s have a look at some helpful Hydrogen Peroxide Uses in the Garden!

Starting cactus from seeds is an inexpensive growing method that will only cost a few cents per plant. This will allow you to give them away as gifts and share them with friends too! Here is everything and more you need to know on How to Grow Cactus from Seeds!

If you have a horticultural problem or query, a flower show is an ideal place to find out what you want to know, either from a stall holder or from the RHS. I arrived with three queries, all of which were answered. Q. Rust ruins my Garlic Crop –

Our botanist, Yannis Christophides, was endlessly patient as we kept asking him to identify orchids that we had already seen several times. I came away confident that I could accurately identify four of the over fifty orchids that grow in Cyprus – the Naked Man orchid (no mistaking that one), Orchis anatolica, Giant Orchid and Serapia, but beyond that there are so many tiny variations in colour, pattern and shape of each small flower that I was seldom entirely confident. The orchids are more discriminating though – in particular, Yannis described their sex life which is complex and specific. To achieve pollination each species of orchid must attract its own unique insect by exuding a pheromone that only that insect responds to – sometimes from over a kilometre away. Once pollinated, the seed must be infected with a particular myccorhizal fungi for it to germinate. Evolution does result in some extraordinary processes. Sadly, there

On a recent visit to the Walled Nursery at Hawkhurst, I noticed that quite a few of the newly sown seeds were covered with coarse grit, rather than a layer of compost. I thought I would give this a try with cosmos seeds that I bought from Sarah Raven – I had poor germination with earlier sowings. What a tri

Here are some weird yet handy Toilet Paper Uses in the Garden that will help you out with many gardening chores!

Seedy Goings-On Although I am holding off sowing seeds that need more nurturing than I can provide if the weather turns cold, I am getting on with sowing plants that only need heat for germination and can then be moved to the unheated greenhouse. So I’ve sown several herbs and lettuces and the first batch of broad beans and will make another sowing this week.

I’ve decided that having the builders replacing the roof requires a certain degree of fatalism and detachment on two counts.  Firstly, that there is only a ceiling and a tarpaulin between us and the outside world, and secondly the garden has disappeared under a mountain of building materials. Rather than fret about it I’ve been focusing my energies in the greenhouse where I’ve planted bulbs and sown seeds, including sweet peas that are now germinating nicely. Fortunately we have been very lucky with the weather and by the end of the week the roof will be weather tight.  Gardening however will remain impossible for some weeks to come.  

When it comes to kitting out your greenhouse you can end up spending a small fortune.  Let’s take a look at the essential bits of equipment to help you set up your greenhouse in the right way.   Greenhouse Staging Every greenhouse should have a b