Sowing Carrot (and Other) Seeds

I gave a talk about seeds the other day. (Please don't yawn, dear reader!)

Seeds are amazing - look at how they can detect gravity, for example (to push the shoot up and the roots downwards). And detect diurnal temperature fluctuations (so they don't germinate when too deep); when I was studying horticulture many years ago, a fellow student told me about gardeners digging up an area of lawn for a new garden bed - just where there'd been a flower bed 100 years earlier - in the Malmsbury Botanic Garden. Lo and behold, seeds, buried too deep until now, germinated; and staff could see the genus and species of what plants had been grown there (but as hybrids, so possibly not the same colour) so long ago. It seems like a little bit of magic, doesn't it?

Fortuitously, I gave the talk - by chance - in mid-April, right after some good rain, and while the soil is still warm, so I could say `plants seeds now'! (And keep well watered - the rain hasn't penetrated the soil that far yet.)

(Planting cold-weather plants and veg (not warm-weather veg: tomatoes, pumpkins,zucchini), except celery seeds which dislike warm soil and are better planted in May in Melbourne; probably in April in the highest reaches of my beloved Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, like Olinda and Mt Dandenong.)

I moved my little hens recently from one veg garden bed to another, and planted the newly manured bed (thank you girls) with winter vegetables earlier than usual. The broccoli, kale and leek seedlings are  doing so much better than when I pop them into cold soil - usually in May - which makes them just sit there, sulking, not growing roots or top growth (and who can blame them?).

Recently I had to pull out a few overgrown veg from a bed with, among other vegetables, purple carrot seedlings. (As seedling-bought plants they have suffered a brief lack of water at one point (maybe at the nursery) and so they bolted, producing pretty umbels of flowers - which I rather liked. (This is Trachymene, top, with an umbrella-like head, rather similar to a Queen Anne's Lace carrot flower umbel, from the same family, Apiaceae or Umbelliferae.) I love collecting home-grown seeds from old plants, like kale, and these carrots, that have gone to seed, and if I sow immediately, there's a very high germination rate.

So I sowed some carrot seed and kept some seeds for later. I picked some browned seed heads and popped some in a bowl, labelled, in the house to dry before storing in a cool, dry, dark place; some I scattered in the veg patch and had a wonderful germination rate (above)with too many seedlings too close. I need to move some (on a cool day) and thin them, too. I find this happens with leeks, too.

After my talk a lovely gentleman said he'd been told to plant seeds twice the depth of their length. Surely that was in my talk, I thought? But no, when I shortened my talk (keeping in flower pollinators (like my old echidna in the garden (above), moving bidgee-widgee (Acaena) seed balls or burrs (which attach itself to animal fur or feathers aiding dispersal) passively), and when to plant most seeds (autumn, to give the plant a chance to settle in before our hot, dry summer (not spring as they say in the ubiquitous English books and magazines), germination inhibitors, and even NPK ratios for feeding plants), yep, I'd left that out. Oops. (I'd discussed planting the seeds not too deeply, so that the energy reserve lasts until the first leaf can unfurl and start receiving light from the sun to become the energy source. But not: `in general, seeds should be planted at a depth of two times the width of the seed. For example, if you have a seed that's about 1mm wide, it should be planted about 2mm deep'. But for poppy seeds, I said, scatter over mulch, press in lightly and, of course, water in well. Peas and beans - larger seeds - have a larger energy source, so are planted more deeply.)

It's back in now, in case I give the talk to another garden club!

And I'm outside planting seeds myself: yellow peas, broad beans with crimson flowers, black pansies, golden chard. Just like when I was three, I'm getting so much satisfaction and joy from the subsequent little seedlings, many from home-collected seed.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria. (www.jillweatherheaddesign.com.au)