Pottering with Pansies

I find pansies are such cheerful flowers as they can give us a dash of garden colour in most months of the year. This pot of pensive beauties were part of a project a while back.

I also love the smaller, old fashioned ‘Johnny-jump-up’ violas that retain their wild pansy charm.

The Johnny-jump-up Violas in their rustic basket planter on my yard wall

With this is mind, this year, pansies have been my first seed sowings of the year. The first ones to go in were the Swiss Giants Mixed – they’re the ones with smiling faces 😉

Sowing my Swiss Giants Mixed Pansies in coir compost

I sowed these seeds two weeks ago and the seedlings are now pushing through in earnest.

Swiss Giants Pansy seedlings and sowing seeds for Clear Crystal Mixed

Today, I’ve sown a second set of pansies. These ones are the single colour type with a yellow eye, Clear Crystal Mixed.

I’ve sown my seeds in coir compost again, as I did last year. I’ll do another post to show you this useful addition to my gardening kit, but if you’ve not seen this type of compost before, here is a quick preview of how it starts out –

Using Wilko lightweight multi-purpose compost – 100% coco coir

These lightweight blocks of compressed coir from Wilko are really handy for me to carry home on the bus. In the above image, we are sawing off some smaller blocks to make up into the growing medium.

Now I’ll be watching for today’s pansy seeds to put in an appearance, but I’m sure there’ll be lots more seed sowing going on in the coming weeks. Spring is coming …

Peggy

Seed sowing and Snowdrops

My first seed sowing of 2015

February’s morning sunshine with a hint of warmth in it has had me itching to start this year’s gardening season. After my weekend task of tidying up and repotting cabbages in the back yard, today I succumbed to my first batch of seed sowing and I started off a box of salad leaves and rocket. I sowed some remaining dwarf dahlia seeds that I came across in my seedbox too, rather hopefully, as I’m not sure if they’ll germinate because the seed is a bit old. But I love dahlias, so it was worth a try.

I also sowed some sweet peas but I’m trying a different approach to last year. Last year’s gardening experiment for me was trying out air pruning plant pots for the first time. Some readers may remember I blogged about my sweet pea experiment. I will be using air pruning pots again this year, but not for the sweet peas.

Today I decided to return to another method I have used before for sowing sweet peas – I planted the seeds in some recycled cardboard tubes filled with compost. When they grow, the sweet peas will be transplanted out into a larger pot this year, complete with their recycled tubes. I might crochet a jute ‘trellis’ to fasten to the fence for the plants to climb on but I just need to ponder on that a little more.

Snowdrops in bud

When I went outside to hang out my washing today, I noticed I wasn’t the only one to be enjoying the warm February day. The snowdrops, that only last week were barely poking their green points though the brown blanket of last year’s dying grasses, were now proudly nodding their full white buds in the gentle westerly breeze. Ah yes! Now that is a real promise that Spring is not far off!

J Peggy Taylor