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Vital Seeds Ltd

April Flower Power!

Published almost 2 years ago • 2 min read

It's official - April is here!

It feels like there is an energetic shift around the end of March when the clocks go forward. The extra hour of light makes the evenings feel more spacious and it feels more like summer than winter.

There are loads of seeds you can sow in April, click the button below for a full list.

April is a great month for sowing flower seeds, read on for some flower love.

Flower Power!

We love flowers here at Vital Seeds, more so each year it seems. They bring such joy and vibrancy to the patch and are loved by our precious pollinating insects. We thought we'd run through some growing tips for our four best selling flowers.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers do not need much introduction! Some say the are queen of the flowers, and it's easy to see why. They are pure and bold, unashamedly flower and not much else.

Sunflowers are really easy to grow, and are therefore great to grow with kids. They can be sown in pots under cover from March or directly in the soil in May once the danger of frost has passed.

If sowing direct then be aware that the seeds are much loved by birds and mice due to their high oil content so make sure you sow enough for the wildlife too!

As the plants grow they may need some staking to stop them from falling over as they can get quite top heavy.

If you want to save your own sunflower seeds then you need to wait for the head to droop, dry and turn yellow in the autumn. Then break off the seeds and store for next year.

Calendula

Calendula is a wonderful flower to grow and works particularly well dotted around the veg patch due to its compact size. The plants are very tough and can withstand a lot of cold and neglect which is great if you are busy and can't give that much time to your garden.

It is a hardy annual so seeds can be sown in autumn or spring. Autumn-sown seeds will flower earlier than spring-sown so it can be nice to do some of both. Seeds can be either direct sown or in modules.

Calendula really benefits from being 'dead-headed' which means taking off the spent flowers once they have bloomed, before the plant makes seeds. If this is done regularly they will flower over a very long period of time.

The flowers are edible and brighten up summer salads. The petals also have medicinal properties and are often used in balms and other home made products.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are our favourite edible flower (in fact the whole plant is edible, but the flowers are the tastiest bit). The are not frost hardy so need to be started indoors from mid March or direct sown in May. They grow very vigorously and the trailing varieties can take over an impressive amount of space.

The flowers are great in salads, you can also freeze them into ice cubes for jazzing up summer cocktails!

We love to nibble the flowers from the top down to the base and see how the flavour changes from spicy to sweet (nectar is at the bottom).

Nasturtiums produce huge amounts of flowers and seeds and will come back year after year.

Cosmos

Cosmos are almost as quintessentially 'flowery' as sunflowers. They are simple and beautiful and their tones of pink, red and white really brighten up the patch. They will flower over a long period if dead-headed regularly.

They can be sown in modules from mid-March or direct sown in May, they are half-hardy so cannot withstand very cold temperatures. We find that surface-sowing cosmos is more effective than completely covering the seeds with compost.

Orange cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) is edible whilst the 'normal' cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) is not.

Happy sowing and growing

Fred, Ronja, and the rest of the team

P.S. Remember that if you've been growing seedlings indoors then they will need 'hardening off' before planting out. This means acclimatising the plants to cooler and windier conditions gently before planting them out in their final position. See this page by RHS to learn more.

Vital Seeds Ltd

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