Successional seed sowing

Why is successional seed sowing important?

• Sowing your seeds successionally ensures you have a constant supply of quality flowers all season.

• To make this task easier and less time consuming I’ve created an interactive tool that allows you to input the date you want to sow your first seeds then it calculates the dates for later plantings whilst also considering the way that annuals flower ie
  • a single flower e.g. clarkia
  • medium flowers e.g. sunflower
  • cut and come again e.g. statice

You’ll be able to see when flowers are available, making both your marketing easier and your bouquet making simpler

Hardy annuals

These can be sown at almost any time of the year if you have enough light. If you don’t have artificial lights then you need to wait until there are 10 or more hours of daylight or your seedlings will grow very leggy. They don’t need heat to germinate but will germinate slightly faster if they are on a gentle heat. They can be sown successionally all season and again in the Autumn for overwintering.

Half-Hardy annuals

These flowers are not frost-hardy – they can’t stand the cold. Again, they don’t need heat to germinate but will germinate slightly faster if they are on gentle heat. They grow fast and will soon take over the greenhouse so don’t sow them before you need to. To calculate when to sow them, count back 6 to 8 weeks from your last frost date – historically our last frost has been the 15 May so I would sow starting about the beginning of April.

Done-for-you calculator

The spreadsheet takes away the hard work of figuring out the best dates to plant and can also be used as a record – overwrite it with your actual flowering and harvesting date – that will make next year’s plan even easier

CLICK HERE for the training notes and how-to-video

Interactive spreadsheet

And you can get a copy of the interactive spreadsheet below