Anyone with an allotment?

My thoughts turn to what I'm growing this season - where do you get your seeds? Wilko used to be my main source, before that B&Q own brand used to be cheap. Any recommendations ?

We use Premier Seeds Direct for 99% of ours. Plenty of good hobby-scale seed merchants on eBay as well with interesting varieties.

1hr later….
Lazy plotholder never turned up to help as agreed.

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Another win today.
It’s not as rotted as you’d hope but there’s plenty of it!

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A second vote from us for Premier Seeds, although the "bigger" seed companies often have offers on .

https://www.suttons.co.uk/email/seed49?source=email-seed49-260124&utm_source=RedEye&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SUSN1842-SeedClear-260124&utm_content=SUSN1842-SeedClear-260124&acq_source=

I’ve used premier seed direct too. Good prices for good quantities. I use https://www.realseeds.co.uk/ for a few specific things that I can’t seem to find anywhere else. Their seed is really good in my experience. The special Swiss sweetcorn I bought from them is excellent. I bought the same variety from Dobies last year and it was really weak (and the packet was short filled). The real seed Co version from the previous year germinated and grew way better.

Sutton’s group is Thompson and Morgan/Dobies/Sutton’s/organic seed catalogue and are all much of a muchness. Not bad at all but just a big group, however if they short fill your seeds or there are any issues they send replacement seeds right away. I tried to avoid using them this year but they dragged me in with their 89p seed packet offer a couple of weeks ago and I got 4 or 5 extra bits.

Premier Seeds Direct

+1 here

Usually with premier seeds if you buy thru eBay there’s buy 4 get 1 free and all sorts of other deals to be had.
If nothing else they seem to give you 1000x seed as opposed to 100 or so from suttons etc.
Not that I need to grow 1000 turnips but there’s always plenty of excess to give away.

Ohhh. I'll look on ebay at Premier seeds this year, thanks.

“You shall syc no more!”

Had ours through via the AA, seed potatoes I think come in Feb.

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The plot holder turned up at 1pm in the end to ‘help’. By that point I was long done.
He then demanded I prune his apple tree as well to make up for me not waiting for him before I started on the sycamore.
We agreed on a 9am start.

Lazy, ungrateful, old bastard. I wouldn’t mind if they’d actually grown anything in the last 3 years. By all accounts he’s had the plot 20 years and never grown a single crop.

Those Astor peppers look interesting :) saw them in another seed catalog but went with Soroksari for our sweet peppers as they’re apparently more tolerant of a shitty summer than most.

peppers

Never grown sweet peppers (other than chillis) so I may come calling for advice if they go tits up!

Chop that ungrateful git’s apple tree down to a stump.

You can go direct to kings seeds as well. I bought some 9-star perennial broccoli seed off them last year. Good stuff.

We’ve always struggled with sweet peppers in the past, hoping this year is better :)

Also, his apples are pretty nice so I’m happy to continue scrumping them as normal, it’s not like he bothers to pick them.

Sounds like he's going to be growing frozen sausages this season!

I’ve been saving a whole bunch of ganja seeds over the last year. Original plan was to scatter them near police stations, middle of roundabouts etc for the lols.
Might dump the lot on his plot instead.
I really want to annexe his plot as an orchard/root veg area. It’s wasted on him.

I presume he’s a retired council worker as no-one else on our site gets away with doing fuck all.

Silly question here but how long do seeds keep?

If I’m buying a pack from somewhere like Premier Seeds, will they keep for the next year or two to use?

A muck heap like a gently steaming yeti. Just beautiful.

Generally a year or so is ok, a lot of the time they’ll have a ‘sow by’ date on the packet, viability will vary wildly depending on what it is.

I bought a packet of out of date pepper seeds for 20p last year and the germination rate is only about 10-15%.

I’ve also seen a YouTube video of a chap successfully germinating a 100+ yr old packet of tomato seeds so overall you’ll probably be ok next year.
Keep them dry, keep them cool. We keep ours in a Tupperware in the fridge.

I’m growing seeds that I got 3-4yrs ago.

Excellent, thanks!

That muck heap got absolutely rinsed yesterday. Obviously it’s there for everyone to use but there was no email to announce it’s arrival and one of the plot holders(who’s a builder and hard as nails) got his 3 sons round and snarfed at least 30-40 barrow loads in one hit, must’ve got at least 1/3 of the pile.
He does have 2 plots but even so it’s a massive piss take.

It becomes a bit of a free for all as when people see him get stuck in everyone panics and it’s like a run on a bank.

I was planning on spending the whole day doing trees(I promised a couple of the retired folks I’d sort theirs out as well) but ended up covering a few beds instead as worried it’ll all be gone in a few days.

Yeah I've got loads of packets of seeds from the last couple of years which I keep in a tin in the back of a cabinet and will throw in trays come the spring. There are certain fickle plants but generally I've found if a packet has worked before, it'll work the following year.

On that note, if anyone wants some out of date Soroksari pepper seeds to give a try I’ll pop them in the post. I managed to get a few going after soaking in tea and wet paper towel in the airing cupboard but no guarantees lol.

Got a start on it this morning.
The area I'm starting with is 3.5m x 6.5m.
10x 55l bags of mushroom compost and it's not even covered half of the plot! My wife spotted a post on the local FB group earlier today from someone down the road with a huge amount of horse manure they're giving away so I'll be down there with my bags and fork this week to get some.

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