Tom plants etc.

[Borlotti]

Went for a walk around B & Q, just to see if I could get any bargains, ie reduced plants.  No luck.  Looked at the tomato plants, and other veg plants.  So expensive.  Tom plants (were quite large) were £3.75 each.  So came home and planted some more seeds.  Have got some tom seeds coming up but very small, but hopefully will do OK.  Going to try an experiment this year, chuck all my out of date seeds on the allotment, when it gets a bit warmer, and just see what grows.  All good fun.

[Borlotti]

[Jayb]

I went to B&Q yesterday and was saddened to see a big trolley stack of young plants, courgette, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers etc all left to fend for themselves outside in the wind and rain.
I'm sure your seedlings will grow on quickly now temperatures are a little warmer and daylight is longer. I sowed some cherry and dwarf tomatoes beginning of Feb to go in the greenhouse and I can see the first little flower trusses appearing. But after the cold start of last year my main lot of tomatoes are yet to be sown, probably this week.

[Squash64]

A neighbour showed me some tomato plants she had bought at
B & Q. She had put the tray in the garden, thinking it was the right
time and they were almost dead. I told her I would give her some
of my plants when it's warm enough.
I've got plants ready for the cold greenhouse now, I sell them at the
allotments for 80p each for charity.

[Tee Gee]

Tom plants (were quite large) were £3.75 each.

Who thinks up these prices that is a ridiculous price, does anyone buy them?

I don't know if I have been spoiled over the years but in recent years I have seen that the prices are rocketing and I am not sure if the quality is as good either.

To counter that a few people on the allotment have started buying their plants from me now hence the reason for growing so many of these;



All I do is tell the plot holders to tell me by the end of February how many plants they will require and I grow the plants on to a size where they are ready for planting out!

I feel guilty when I ask them 60p for them, so how people can charge six times more for plants that are too early to plant them out unless you have heated space!

OK I accept that sometimes 'early buys' are expensive but I do not see Tomato plants coming in to that category!

Another thing I have found this year that is getting worse is the 'seed count' in packets!

I think I mentioned before I get many of my seeds at £1 a packet from well known seed merchants at Harrogate Autumn & Spring shows but even here I am finding anomalies.

For example; Usually some companies note the approximate seed content in their packets but what I noticed this year is;  these figures are missing???

So the other day I opened a packet of Calabrese which in the past used to hold around 200 seeds then in recent years this dropped to 100 seeds for the same price, meaning they had doubled in price!

Guess what!

There were 43 seeds in the packet meaning they have doubled in price again.

So you see what we gardeners are up against??

Its bl**dy daylight robbery.

I will be taking it up with the manger of this seed firm when I visit the Harrogate Show in a couple of weeks time!

Sorry for the rant folks but it would seem that many commercial companies are putting up prices and blaming it on " the times we are living in" and in some cases this might be true but I would say in this particular case we are being "ripped off"

Opinions please!

I just want to know if I am the only one who thinks this way...Tg

[goodlife]

Tee Gee...get to phone and give the seed company good rant  ...if they are any good, they will send you replacements with apologies..
I don't tend to buy any full price packets from the major seed suppliers anymore...they have overpriced themselves and that shows when they can afford to send triplicate catalogues..or even more with some many 'extra special' discounts , money off vouchers, sales etc...something advertised every month...oh, and their postage costs..
I now buy most of my stuff from smaller suppliers who buy them bulk and package it into their own, more generous quantity packets that cost less too... And the quality of the seed is at least as good...just minus the fancy photos on seed packets.

I noticed Aldi was selling different vegetable plants in mix trays and tomato plants too..I only took notice of tomatoes price, that was £3.99 for 4, just normal Alicante and some other 'usual' variety. They toms didn't actually look too bad at all..they were about 3-4" tall.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I just rely on seed saving and swaps. It's far more satisfying than buying packets of standard varieties, quite apart from anything else.

[Tee Gee]

Tee Gee...get to phone and give the seed company good rant

I think I would rather have a "Face to Face" than an impartial phone call so I will be patient for another couple of weeks!

I went into a pound shop last week and got four packets of seeds for a pound and they all contained in excess of 200 seeds.

Sowed two of them when I got home and they are now ready for pricking out which fetches me back to the quality / quantity issue I mentioned in my opening mail.

[Duke Ellington]

Mini munch are my favourite cucumbers but look at the price and the amount of seeds!!!!!

http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/cucumber-mini-munch-seeds-pid4124.html

I like them because they are a small cucumber with suits us but the price I may have to rethink this!!

Duke

[Deb P]

Interesting what you say about the number of seeds in packets this year, I noticed this as well when I was sowing the tomato seeds I grow for the lottie plant sale and luckily purchased the majority in the Wyvales sale or saved my own seeds. Container toms like Minibel and Tumbling Tomhad far fewer seeds than last year.  Thank goodness for Franchi, their packet sizes are fantastic value!

[Squash64]

Some of the tomatoes I am growing to sell for charity (hopefully)
Quickly running out of space though.

[Deb P]

They look great Betty, bigger than mine! I have just invested in a couple of new mini greenhouses with reinforced covers (Mother's Day pressies) that I use inside my greenhouse to give a bit of extra heat and protection. They should double in size by early May when they will be ready for the plant sale...

[cornykev]

I'm surprised you don't save seed Tee Gee.   

[Deb P]

Mini munch are my favourite cucumbers but look at the price and the amount of seeds!!!!!

http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/cucumber-mini-munch-seeds-pid4124.html

I like them because they are a small cucumber with suits us but the price I may have to rethink this!!

Duke

Why are cucumber seeds so horribly expensive? I got a few packs in the summer 50p sale as usual, but most packets only contain 4 seeds!! I guess for the number of fruits you get even at full price it is still with doing compared to the cost of buying a cuke every week, and they are so juicy when freshly cut..

[Tee Gee]

I'm surprised you don't save seed Tee Gee.

I do

I can't remember when I last bought  Tomato,Runner bean,French Bean,Broad Beans,Sweet Pepper,and Chillies seeds plus PF potatoes,Garlic and that is just the veg.

Then there are the flowers!

[Duke Ellington]

Have you saved cucumber seeds Tee Gee? Is there seed saving info on your web site?

duke

[Tee Gee]

Have you saved cucumber seeds Tee Gee?

Yes! but I found a couple of problems and they are;

Most of the modern varieties are hybrids meaning they do not come true type.

Because you don't know what plant crosses took place when producing the original seed, you have to take what you get, which I guess is closer to the dominant gene in the cross and you lose the benefits of why they were crossed.

The other thing is when to collect the seeds?   I don't  know of any way of telling when they are ripe! :(

What I tend to do is allow one fruit to go yellow and soft then open it up and extract the seeds.

Then I treat them much in the same way as tomatoes and that is;

I stir them up in a container of clean water to remove the gel around them then I strain them and allow them to dry, preferably in sunlight so they are 'sun dried' if you like.

Finally; because I do not know a viable seed from a duff one I save them all and double up on the number of seeds I sow.

So some years I get lots of seedlings other years just a few.

So as you see I don't do anything very scientific, perhaps some of the others might know a better way!

Is there seed saving info on your web site?

Yes it is here;

http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Data/Collecting%20seeds/Collecting%20Seeds.htm

[antipodes]

Yes, quantities are very random I find. I was quite happy with vegetable seeds dot net but this year I admit that the quantities were a bit stingy. They also sent me quite a few seed packets obviously imported from eastern Europe with just the name changed. Now I don't really mind that as I have had seeds like that before and they have been pretty good, but somehow it seems a bit stingy, they are obviously making good profit out of that, I would like to be warned that the seeds are imported.

I now buy quite a few basic things from Lidl for 29 cents a packet, such as radish, basil, lettuces etc. Beans and tomatoes I save and a few random things like Rocket which goes to seed really easily. I never manage to get true seed from squash but that is really what is worth saving!

[Ellen K]

I think seeds are good value mostly, a neighbour with 2 plots often trials "fancy" seeds against Wilkos own with the rows side by side and Wilkos often do as well or better and they are 99p or less with B2G1F.  And the justification for the 4-seeds-in-a-packet jobbies is that they are hand pollinated F1s - if you believe that, then it's quite reasonable ** grinds teeth **.

What gets me is when the pack says "approx 100 seeds" and you find there is 35.  Well, nobody would say 35 is approximately 100 - if there were 85, well maybe you could say OK but sometimes it's just a con.

The £3.75 B&Q plants are grafted onto vigorous rootstock.  Having tried a few, the Aubergines are definitely worth buying, the others less so unless you are short of space and want a guaranteed crop.