At the end of 2013 I spent a good while picking seeds to prepare for 2014.  I have mainly been concentrating on the herbs and vegetables, and here is what I have been up to so far.

Choosing where to buy from: In my Autumn garden post I mentioned that I was looking to start planning my garden for the next year and I received a number of recommendations for places to buy seeds.  In the end I bought the majority of mine from The Real Seed Catalogue which I can really recommend for range of seeds and service.  I haven’t planted anything yet but there is a philosophy behind my choices.  The Real Seed Catalogue, only sell ‘real’ seeds which means that seeds can be harvested from all of the plants you buy, and information about harvesting them is available on their website.  As a new vegetable gardener I thought the gift packs were a really good option, but in the end I chose mine individually (but I did select varieties they had chosen as particularly easy to grow.)  Their website isn’t as shiny as some but I loved that it was old fashioned and easy to navigate and did I mention how gorgeous their packaging is…

I have also managed to buy some end of line seeds from a local garden center, some onions and garlic sets from a shop in town and over Christmas I bought my potato sets from a Burford garden center.  It seems to me that potatoes are expensive to mail order due to the weight of them, onions are similar so I was glad to do this locally.

Choosing what to grow: I started the process of selecting seeds by writing a list of things that we enjoy eating and buy on a regular basis. After deciding what I wanted and purchasing my seeds, I read on Mark’s Veg Plot blog about Value for Space Rating (VSR) which relates to what is economical to grow in your garden, i.e not widely available and expensive.  Looking at this, onions and potatoes don’t seem like good ideas to grow as they are cheap and widely available.  Nevertheless I really wanted to try my hand at these anyway (and I’ve already planted my onions).

Planning your space: I am very new to garden planning in any way, shape or form, but it seemed to me that square foot gardening would be a good way for me to make the most of the space I have.  There are lots of guides available online, and I have added lots of idea to my .  I did have a scout around for ways in which to visualise garden beds and the best I came across was Smart Gardener, it’s very US centric but I was able to plan out my beds, although I couldn’t find all the exact varieties.  If you can link it up to what you’re growing it even provides reminders of what you should be doing each week.

I have also purchased a little gardening notebook called ‘The Vegetable Patch’ which guides you on what you need to be doing when and gives you a bit of space to write notes for each season.  This was simply a little new year treat to myself as I love to have somewhere to record some notes.  All the advice you could possibly need is available online with a quick google.

What I Chose:

THE REAL SEED CATALOGUE

• Cherokee Trail of Tears Climbing French Beans
• Oskar Very Dwarf Early Pea
• Touchon Carrot
• Striato Di Napoli Green Ribbed Courgette
• Green Heading Calabrese Or Broccoli
• Waltham Butternut Butternut Squash
• Morton’s Secret Mix Very Mixed Lettuces
• Kaibi Round No 2 Early Sweet Pepper
• Giant Prague (Improved) Celeriac

THE LOCAL SHOPS

• Early Purple Wight Garlic
• Carcassonne Wight Garlic
• Troy White Onion
• Electric Red Onion

GARDEN CENTER SEED SALE

• Wild White Strawberries
• Incas ‘Plum’ Tomato
• Corriander
• Black Beauty Aubergine
• Greek Basil

BURFORD GARDEN CENTER

• Maris Piper Potato
• Home Guard First Early Potato