A beautiful day for planting seeds under cover and pottering around outside in the sunshine pricking out cosmos seeds and potting on moth mullein. There were yellow butterflies floating across the garden and fat bumblebees enjoying the flowers on the winter honeysuckle.

Moth mullein just potted on

Noticeable growth and progress from last weekend with tiny blue clary seedlings inside poking through the compost from the sowing last Sunday. They are one of my favourite flowers for cutting and last year kept going and going until self seeding in Autumn.

Salvia seedlings sown last sunday

Cosmos Dazzler pricked out into small pots

Today, I am going to put into action another one of the sensible pieces of advice from Georgie Newbery’s flower farming course which is to only use fresh seed. A few weeks ago mentioned sowing old packets of seed – very few of them actually germinated while some of the fresh seed was up in just a few days and all the fresh seed germinated after a week or so. It is definitely a waste of time doing my twice daily check on seed germination to gaze at lifeless compost which disappointingly doesn’t produce anything very much. So there is going to be a fresh start and a ruthless purge – apart from my tomato seeds which seem to last forever.

Tempted to plant out some of my plants at the plot today as they have weathered winter outside and seem quite hardy, but the soil seemed so wet and cold last weekend it seems a bit harsh . Perhaps with a blanket of fleece.

Meanwhile, still sunny and lots more seeds to plant.