Winter sowing method, does it work? Well, yes it does indeed - Gardening with Brendan

I’ve been drunk at times in the past but never married, so I can’t speak to that, but I’d say there’s a grain of truth in the gardening element of that proverb at least!

This will be my last column of 2024 and to say I’ve enjoyed trying my hand at a bit of gardening and growing from seed this year would be to undersell it. Never one to let my bank balance or reality get in the way of a good pipe dream I’m already, in fact, thinking about how amazing it would be to start a native forest or growing fields and fields of flowers and crops organically. Would suit my better to sort out the rest of my ramshackle garden first, mend the fence that’s coming apart and generally just tidy the place up. Sure maybe next year…

That’s one thing I thought about before I started doing this earlier back in spring. My back garden was a bit of a tip, it was big but bland and nothing to look at, a bit overgrown, largely unloved and barely used. In truth I only really saw it as a bit of a nuisance, having to cut the grass and keep the hedgerows along a riverbank behind from taking over. I was worried what people would think. We are so used to seeing images of perfection and unblemished beauty, pristine homes with perfectly manicured gardens, breathtaking landscapes, and a lot of the times we feel our own don’t and can’t match up. But I think I’ve proved to myself this year that you can create something beautiful out of nothing but a handful of seeds and a bag of compost, and you can make your garden feel part of your home and life. It’s gone from a chore to a treasure trove. And if I can do that, then so can anyone else.

There have been so many unexpected benefits. It’s good to be out in fresh air away from screens, to get closer to nature and get your hands mucky in the process. It’s brilliant for the head as well. I can’t speak for others and I don’t know why but it has had a real calming effect on me. And there’s something pretty special about heading out the back and seeing an explosion of colour and also in just tracking the cycle of the plants you grew yourself from seed. I’ve had seven months of kaleidoscopic colour and it hasn’t finished yet. In fact it’s been so mild this autumn that now in November and just a few weeks away from winter and despite the shortening days I still have sweet pea, cosmos, hollyhock, petunias, alyssum and marigolds among others blooming away.

Winter sowing method results

Which brings me on to the latest batch of seeds sown just a month ago and using the winter sowing method. This method, popular among people across the Atlantic, involves turning lidless, large plastic milk cartons, fruit juice, lemonade and water bottles into mini greenhouses, sowing some seeds inside and leaving them outside over winter to germinate and grow, creating strong plants for the early spring – if it works.

Admittedly I started mine early as I wanted to do a video / column on it in case anyone else wanted to try it over the coming weeks and needed to start collecting bottles and containers, and it has been very mild, but I’d still blown away that everything germinated and grow just fine on its on with zero input from me over the past month. That’s at least 100 new spring onion, Iceland and oriental poppy and calendula seedlings I can plant out now to get a head start. At the end of this month I plan to reuse the containers to try and germinate some green Bells of Ireland flowers, blue scabiosa, pink asters and some other things I’ve never tried to grow before.

The only other job I really want to get done over the next few weeks is to head out to a local park or wood and collect a few bin bags of fallen leaves to spread over the lawn and the garden bed as a mulch for winter. This is the ideal time to do this. The leaves break down and help feed and protect the bare soil over the winter. They also protect tender young plants and act as a barrier to keep the weeds down.

That aside though, I think I’m done for this year. Everything that had to be potted on or planted in the ground has been. The mild weather so far this autumn has been great for getting biennial plants established before winter comes and should results in good strong healthy plants come the spring, if they survive the elements.

All being well, I’ll be back in the dark days of January and February 2025 to start sowing indoors once more and we’ll have plenty of things growing and blooming by late March or April.

It’s been a blast, and thank you if you’re a regular reader of the column, or watch the videos on our website at derryjournal.com I hope you found something useful in them. And please do let me know if you have any tips or what you have been growing this year or are planning to grow next year. You can get in touch via email at [email protected]