Gardener Roger will be sharing his top tips on how you can bring a little colour into your home; whether you have a big open space or just enough room for a pot plant on your windowsill.
Sow some summer colour
You can pick up some packets of seeds from your local garden centre or DIY shop which can cost as little as £1. You’ll also need a small pot and some compost to get you started.
Once you’ve got what you need, it’s time to sow your seeds. You can sow some hardy seeds such Sweet Peas as early as mid-February. We also like to grow Cosmos at the school, which we start sowing later in March as it gets warmer; here is how we get our seeds started:
- Take a small pot and add some compost so it is about 1cm from the top of the pot
- Open your seed packet and sprinkle around 7 or 8 seeds on top
- Top up the pot with a thin layer of compost
- Put the pot on a dish in a well-lit area, like a windowsill
- Pour on a little water to wet the soil, tip away any excess water that’s still in the dish after an hour
Within a few weeks you should start to see little green stems start to pop up through the soil – these are your seedlings. You may need to keep turning the pot around to stop the seedlings leaning over too much towards the light.
Keep your eye out for the next edition of valleys. where I’ll be sharing the next steps for your seedlings.
Watch our gardening videos and make sure you share your pictures with us if you try out any of these easy tips by using #ValleysMag on Twitter and Facebook