It starts with seeds...

* I was invited to the Garden Press Event, a one day show which connects garden product suppliers with garden media, therefore I’m marking my blog posts from the event as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

There’s nothing more satisfying than sowing a seed and watching it grow is there - but there’s so many seeds available, so knowing where to start can often be overwhelming. But one thing that’s clear is that the seed companies I spoke to this week at the event are going all out to entice us to buy their seeds.

So whether you want to grow vegetables, herbs or flowers why not take a look at these brands

Stocks & Green

Based in Colchester, Iben and Trevor have built Stocks & Green as a reflection of their deep-rooted passion for the world of horticulture and along with their seeds they aim to fill gardener’s lives with vibrant colour, delightful scents and fresh home grown food. And with a display like this, it was hard to resist.

Their range often features personal favourites to give the home gardener a good selection, but avoiding that overwhelm that I mentioned before. They’ve refreshed their seed pack imagery ahead of the show, and the images on their seed packets are stunning.

The back of the seed packets are equally clear and informative, and including the aftercare information is really helpful for gardeners new and old alike.

Among the new flowers for this year include the fluffy looking Papaver ‘Black Swan’ (Opium Poppy), the arching stems of pink firework like flowers of the ‘Cerise Pearls’ Persicaria, and in their vegetable range they’ve added the yellow courgette ‘Goldena’ and a favourite of mine the ‘Black Beauty’.

I left the show with two packs of seeds - a white Echinacea elegantly called ‘White Swan’ which they advise is ideal for pollinators and the young flowers look equally good in a vas, lasting over a week. I’m looking forward to sowing these (under cover between February and June) when the temperatures are more consistently warm, given that I don’t yet have a greenhouse.

The other packet of seeds is a new to me wildflower, but with a name like Fiddleneck and the bee on the front of the packet, how could I resist? The flowers attract bees, butterflies and ladybirds and the plants can also be dug into the soil as a soil improver. Growth is fast, so they can help prevent weeds, but these need to be sown where they are to grow, but can be planted between March and September, so I’ve a bit of time before I start these ones. I think I’ll grow these in an empty spot in our outside border, but probably away from the buddleia which is good at attracting butterflies to the garden.

Mr Fothergill’s

I’m sure this is a brand that you’ve heard of before, and for me it’s a tried and trusted provider of seeds, but they also have a couple of other ranges which you might not be aware of, but which I think are interesting. Each of these is aimed at a different audience as you’d expect, but each is encouraging people to get involved and grow more from seed, whatever their skill level and whatever their interest.

So if you want to grow flowers for cutting, the Johnsons range is likely to appeal to you - and their seed packs are truly stunning, looking less like a traditional seed pack would.

I love a Cosmos, and am very tempted by both the white ‘Purity’ and unusually for me, the red ‘Dazzler’ shown above.

But if it’s vegetables you want to grow, then the D.T.Brown range could be for you. This offers a smaller selection of vegetables, for example only three or four carrot varieties, but those varieties are ones that can be relied on whatever your experience. Each of these seed packets has a QR code on the back providing more information, and the recipe for the dish shown on the lower half of the seed packet, so it really is a sow - grow - eat approach.

And if you’re new to growing from seed then the Oh Sow Simple range would be a good place to start - these are varieties good for starting off, and can be grown in a container or directly where you want them to grow.

You need very little experience for growing seeds, as they are programmed to grow! Just give them warmth, water, something to grow in - as many growers will tell you watching them grow can be magical, so why not try it for yourself?

As it says on the image above - Sow - Grow - Enjoy!

Twelve

Today I’ve been blogging for twelve years - and like last year I’m not sure where the time has gone, though I’m grateful to you for being here, and for being part of my online space and community.

Usually as part of my blog birthday tradition I indulge my other passion - and that’s for a list. This year though it’s taken me a fair while to work out what that list should be, and I guess as the number gets higher that’s always likely to be the case!

Looking back over the years and those three cupcakes to celebrate my third year was looking very promising, but even for me twelve cakes is a lot - so it needed to be something else…

Photo by Michael Skok Skok on Unsplash

Last year I looked at what had changed for me since I started blogging, this year I’m going to try to capture the differences between city and country life - and trust me, I don’t have a list of twelve as I start to write this post - so once again it could be interesting!

But here goes:

1. Mud. There’s a lot of it here, and obviously way more than in London. I’m not a huge fan of mud, especially walking - or slipping - across it, but walking boots definitely help, which leads onto…

2. The countryside is on our doorstep. Sometimes quite literally. But we can walk for less than 10 minutes in any direction and be surrounded by fields, that’s a big plus and vastly different from before where even if we drove for 10 minutes we wouldn’t have reached much countryside - though there are clearly pockets of green and wooded areas in and on the outskirts of London

3. Transport. We still live on a bus route, as we did in London - in fact there are three different routes which pass us here, rather than the two previously. It’s just they’re much less frequent, one route only runs four times a day and the other two twice an hour - but within minutes of each other both times, so if we’re using the bus it takes planning.

4. Greengrocers. Now this is an odd one, there are no greengrocer shops in Newark. Yes, there’s plenty of farm shops around, but the nearest actual greengrocers is either eight or eleven miles away, depending if you’re heading towards Bingham or Bottesford. There are generally more markets though, and the best veg I’ve found is from (what I call) the muddy veg stall in Newark, but they’re only there on a Friday and Saturday. Their veg though is fresh and has that feeling that it’s just been picked (most likely because it probably has) but often it’s still covered in mud.

5. Takeaways. Our takeaway consumption has dramatically lowered. We had fish and chips last week for Valentines, and before that our last takeaway was fish and chips in September. We’ve had a takeaway Chinese and Indian but I think they were probably before that. There are plenty of options in Newark and around, and we were clearly spoilt before just being able to walk around the corner to pick one up, having to get the car out and drive the four or so miles doesn’t happen that often.

6. Milk. This also takes more planning - I now buy two four pints of milk regularly, rather than just picking some up when we needed some. Our local farm shop only sells milk in glass bottles, which takes a level of planning which I just don’t have or aspire too. I also have an ‘emergency’ two pints of milk in the freezer, something that I wouldn’t even have considered whilst living around the corner from an M&S Simply Food.

7. Farmers & Tractors. Not unsurprisingly we see a lot more of these in our rural village, though I suspect if you’ve been in Westminster lately you’ll have seen a fair few more than usual too. Being a Londoner I don’t think I ever realised how much work farmers put in, but here we see just part of that first hand as they make multiple journeys a day past our house, almost always with a friendly wave for anyone they see as they do.

8. Washing vegetables. Yes I know you’re supposed to wash all the veg, even the ones that come in those sterile gas-filled bags from the supermarkets, but I rarely did as a rule. Now though, buying as much of our veg from farm shops and markets I routinely wash more of our veg, apart from MOH is called in to scrub some of the more muddier veg!

9. Eating out past 8:30pm. It’s not all bad, far from it, as there are plenty of fab places to eat but we have readjusted the times we book tables for. They’re mostly timed to coincide with the time the bus arrives, and are often much earlier than we would even consider booking for in London. We’re off to London this week and are heading out to dinner before our almost last train home - and we’ve booked that for 6pm too, so we have enough time to have a relaxed meal, and not have to dash to Kings Cross for the train.

10. Living in a 30mph zone. On the face of it this hasn’t changed, but in London there was so much traffic that it could rarely reach the speed limit, whereas here there’s so few traffic that it’s rare (but not completely unheard of) for traffic to bother to slow down to actually 30mph from the 60mph zones which buffer the village. Sometimes there’s an effort, sometimes a car does and a trail of four or so cars follow, but often some just don’t even bother.

11. Exterior house lights. Country people are obsessed with lighting up their houses, and I’m not sure why. We have lights on the front and back of ours, and they’re handy to have, but they don’t go on every night. Maybe I’m missing something?

12. People talk to you. Now this probably should have been higher up the list, and probably isn’t a surprise. In London people rarely talk to you, unless perhaps you might have passed each other on the street for say six months or a year, and never on public transport. Here though, that’s not the case. The first time we got the bus to Nottingham - it was a mini bus at the time, since upgraded to a single decker - it was like the whole bus was part of the conversation. And many of them had watched as our house was built, seeing progress as they whizzed past on their twice daily journey and were pleased to have met the new owners, reassuring us that the house had been well built. I’m getting more used to it, but occasionally do have to remind people that I’m from London and so not used to all this chat, and they often sympathise with me!

Actually the list came together more easily than I expected, though it was helped by a brief pause while I headed out to Zumba, which relates to another one that could have made the list - the number of village halls - but didn’t. I’ve been to many of the village halls local to me for various activities and classes, but I don’t think I ever went into a church hall back in Blackheath, or if I did not regularly.

So life is different, but not in a bad way at all.

Here’s to another year, I hope you’ll stay around.

'All the patterns' project bag

Before starting to make my Noughts and Crosses quilt I had a trial run of sewing curved blocks using all the patterns I’d pulled out of my stash, which left me with a very colourful test run. And as I don’t like to see anything go to waste, I was sure that I could do something with it.

And sure enough I could, even though it took a little while for the idea to materialise, let alone come to fruition. But as you’ll see, it’s the answer* to a question I regularly have, and so it’s a wonder it took so long.

It’s fair to say at almost 33cm by 30cm it’s the largest pouch I’ve made, but `I didn’t want to cut into the circle, which if you look close enough is just about visible in the jumble of patterns.

It also uses the same pale green backing material as the quilt, and I’ve frankenbatted some offcuts of wadding to give both the front and the back some extra oomph, even though that’s meant I’ve ended up with some wonky zigzag lines - but I’m ok with that, and will call it character!

THE ZIGZAG QUILTING FOLLOWS THE SHAPES OF THE OFFCUTS OF WADDING

*Yes, the answer is invariably ‘you need a pouch for that!’ - but unusually in this instance I’m not exactly sure what the question is, though I have plenty of projects which I’m sure will soon make themselves known.