Kitchen Garden Forum

I have always historically organised seed online and Dobies have been good if not a little pricey and lacking in quanity, I have a full size plot and go through several packets of carrots in normal size, I tried a few packets from Edwin Tucker last year and thought I would try again. What thoughts do others have

Happy New Year to all

CoMpO

Evening CoMpO,
If you buy the bog-standard Amsterdam Forcing,Chantenay and Autumn King triplepacks from Dobies then they are good value.Looking at both catalogues the F1 Hybrids appear to be much of a muchness.

If you want LOTS of seeds, use Seeds of Italy
http://www.seedsofitaly.com/

Dear Compo,
try Moles seeds, they are also on line although their website does not seem to have all the varieties that their catalogue does. They are a wholesale company but the difference in price and packet size makes getting seeds through them very worthwhile.
Their large packets may last several seasons so bear in mind the viability/longevity (or lack thereof) when ordering. For instance parsnips and sweetcorn should ideally only be ordered for the year they are to be used in. However when 1000 seeds of parsnip gladiator are only £2.25 it does not matter if you don't use them all. 200 seeds in the unwins catalogue are 1.79.
You could always club together with a fellow allotmenteer and share the packets.
carrots 8-900seeds /gramme ,viability 3-5 years
amsterdam forcing 25g =£2.40= 20,000seeds
early nantes 25g = £2.40
Most of the other open pollinated types are around the same price. I only tend to use the domestic catalogues for items that i cannot obtain through Moles. They aren't picky about who orders from them they will take anyone's money as long as the minimum order is met (£5) and the order (seeds only) is free of carriage if you order over £50.
Regards Sally Wright.

As an extension to what Sally has posted, Moles also sell Pelleted seed which are absolutely wonderful for people, like myself, with arthritic hands
and are also very good for precision sowing. With pelleted seed there is no flyaways. Moles are an exceedingly good company to deal with.
JB.

I quite often use Premier Seeds Direct on e-bay...

Dear Compo,
I placed an order with moles on Tuesday and it was here thursday - wow!
Regards Sally Wright.

I am going to give moles a go I think, but had problems one year with a packet of pelleted carrot seed that did not germinate well, of course it could have been a one off bad batch, poor conditions, pests etc, but folk appear to recommend them so will give them ago, thanks for taking time to give advice.

CoMpO

We've used Kings Seeds last year as well as the normal seeds from Garden Centres like Thompson and Morgan, which are rather expensive. Kings seemed very reasonable and we had good germination. But I think we will also try Moles this year. I am going to sort through my seeds today and will be putting in my order later. Thanks for the information.

I like D T Brown. their prices are reasonable, the vegetable range good and the service very swift.

I agree with Monika about DT Brown - excellent. I mainly use them and Tuckers who are equally as good. I also use T&M now and again - I know that they have come in for some stick on forum but I've always had first class service from them.

John

I have been going through my seed packets today. There are some seed which are out of date and some which will be out of date in June this year. What do I do, throw the out of date seed packets out or try to sow them and chance a failed crop? Any suggestions.

Dear Catherine,
plant a certain number in a pot now and see what comes up and work out the percentage germination rate. Seeds tend to last for longer that they say on the packet. Exceptions, though, to this rule are parsnips, sweetcorn and parsley imho.
regards Sally Wright.

In our experience old seed may germinate but then not grow on to make decent plants.

To be honest I much prefer to use fresh seed, when lots of effort is put into growing the plants it seems a shame to chance getting off to a poor start. As Sally said some seeds such as parsnips should alway be fresh. Our plot neighbour sowed a whole row of old parsnip seeds last year which were a failure. They had worked hard to get the soil right etc and then nothing. They then sowed the seed we had left after sowing our row and had excellent germination albeit a bit late. The trouble is seed companies often put far too many seeds in a packet than an average gardener can use and so its tempting to use them - I hate throwing things away.

BY the way we buy lots of seeds from Kings. IF you are a member of the NSALG they offer half price seeds and the saving this year easily paid for our membership.

Can recomend Kings, Tucker's, Thos Etty, Real Seeds - they're the ones I use mostly; I get unusual/rare/heirloom/heritage ones from various places and countries via the internet - had some great stuff over the years.
I grew the coloured carrots a couple of times. The purple ones were pretty, but I was disappointed to find they were orange inside!