Soon after getting addicted to gardening I discovered the wealth of seeds and plants that is available on Ebay. It is simply too tempting to have a look every once in a while and buy a few seeds here and there, imagining what beautiful plants / veggies / flowers will be planted in my garden based on the pretty pictures shown in the Ebay listings.

After continuing like this for a little while I decided it was time to give myself a kick in the bum and actually get planting! It’s all very easy looking at pictures and getting excited for the seeds to come, but then to just get lazy and miss the right time to sow the seeds! No more laziness I thought so recently I’ve been clearing out my seed collection, hunting for things that could conceivably be sown now, in September. I don’t have a very large set up at home, no luxurious heated greenhouse (in fact I have a cheap plastic one with a few holes in it). So I have to bear in mind that either the plants need to be big and hardy enough when winter strikes that they survive outdoors, or I need to only grow as much as my windowsills will accommodate.

So lately I’ve been sowing the following:

1) Foxglove (an ebay purchase from almost a year ago). I did grow some of these last year when I bought the seeds, but although the plants have grown fairly big, they haven’t flowered. Maybe the weather was wrong? I don’t know. Let’s see if next year suits them better.

2) Lupins. I don’t even know when I purchased these seeds (well some of them), but they all seem to have germinated fine. I wonder what colours they end up being as I’m in need of fresh lupins to replace the dying one in my garden. Some of the seeds actually came from this lupin which looked brilliant in early summer, but lately it looks like either something has eaten the base of the plant or it has rotted in the recent rainy weather.

3) Oriental Poppies: Another seed purchase I don’t remember how old. Once again these are growing better than expected

4) Delphinium – Pacific Giants: Not sure if these are just slow or unviable, not a single one has come up yet even though everything else I sowed at the same time is growing now.

5) Eryngium: Some more ancient seeds, but they’re doing well so far

6) Spring Onions White Lisbon; because one can never have too many spring onions.

7) Carrots; these might not make it to maturity but we don’t eat a lot of carrots anyway. Plus they’re part of an experiment which I won’t go into now.

8) Wild strawberries. A very recent ebay purchase – I wonder how these will compare with my other strawberry plants.