Choosing seed and sowing it

Choosing seed

Buy seed packed for the current year and stored somewhere cool: seed left in a hot shop loses vigour fast. Choose varieties sold for hot or subtropical climates where you can. Onion seed is the extreme case — do not keep it past one season. And seed saved from your best plants adapts to your garden year by year.

Preparing the seed: soaking

Soaking for a few hours softens hard seed coats and speeds germination. It helps okra, molokhia, beetroot, spinach, coriander, fenugreek and the gourds. Do not soak beans, fava or peas — the coat splits and they rot in sandy soil — and there is no point soaking tiny seed such as lettuce or carrot.

Seed treatment with Pseudomonas: a bacterial culture sold in nurseries that colonises the roots and suppresses some soil diseases. Mix the seed with it as the pack directs and let it dry in shade before sowing. It is optional, but useful for crops prone to damping off.

Three ways to sow

• Direct sowing in the bed: for roots (carrot, radish, beetroot), beans, okra, gourds, and anything that hates being moved.
• Seedling trays: for tomato, eggplant, pepper and the cabbage family. They let you start in September in the shade while it is still too hot outside.
• Seedling pots: one pot per large seed (cucumber, pumpkin, gourds), to protect them without disturbing the roots when you plant out.

Use a fine seed-starting mix (cocopeat with a little compost and perlite or sand) rather than garden soil: it stays loose, drains well and carries fewer diseases.

Things to know when sowing

• Depth: about two to three times the seed’s thickness. Tiny seed (lettuce, rocket) is barely covered; big seed (beans, fava, pumpkin) goes 3–5 cm down.
• Orientation: large flat seed such as cucumber, squash, pumpkin and gourds germinates best set on its edge, so the root heads straight down.
• Watering: with a fine rose or mist, and never let the surface dry out until the seeds have sprouted — sandy soil crusts and dries in hours.
• Labels: write down the crop and the sowing date — you need the date for My garden — and sow slightly more than you need, then thin.

Seed or ready-grown saplings?

For winter vegetables, especially in your first season, buying saplings from a nursery in October is a sensible shortcut for tomato, eggplant, chilli, cabbage and cauliflower. Check that the roots are not coiling out of the pot, there are no yellow leaves, and no whitefly on the undersides of the leaves.