Hiya I'm new to starting flowers from seed. I've bought a load of Johnsons seed and am having trouble understanding the instructions.

One thing I'm stuck on is where it'll say "cover with .5cm compost" for the indoor sowing but for outdoor on the same seed it'll say "cover lightly with fine soil" Do I still need to sow 0.5cm deep or is it different when sowing outside?

Another thing. It shows an image of a plant with an arrow going up and down with a messurment next to it, that's the plants height but there's another arrow pointing sideways, is that the spread of the plant or the spacing?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 15:18:14 +0000, JayneB
wrote:

Welcome JayneB

Do I still need to sow 0.5cm deep or is it
different when sowing outside?

no, same depth, its just harder to guesstimate the depth:-)

, is that the spread of the plant or the
spacing?

Well I suppose you could say both, as you need to space the seed/plant
that far apart so when its fully grown it has enough space.

Hope you are not sowing anything just yet outside, as it is still too
early for almost anything .

Derek


www.lincolnfuchsiasociety.info

On Feb 1, 3:35*pm, Derek wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 15:18:14 +0000, JayneB

wrote:

Welcome JayneB

Do I still need to sow 0.5cm deep or is it
different when sowing outside?

no, same depth, its just harder to guesstimate the depth:-)

, is that the spread of the plant or the
spacing?

Well I suppose you could say both, as you need to space the seed/plant
that far apart so when its fully grown it has enough space.

Hope you are not sowing anything just yet outside, as it is still too
early for almost anything .

Derek

www.lincolnfuchsiasociety.info

This depends on the type of seed you are sowing, when you sow in a pot
or box you cover with compost, grit, vermiculite or something of that
sort and it is fairly fine and easy to get an even cover.
When sowing in the soil the surface is much rougher and so is the soil
going over the seed the given depth is a rough guide only.
if you are sowing a row of say beetroot you would make a drill, (a
small trench using the back of the rake) about 1 inch deep then sow
the seed along it about 1 inch appart, some will be closer some
further appart, then you pull the soil back over and firm down with
the rake held verticle and used as thumper, so although you may have
raked around half to 1 inch of soil over the seed by the time you have
firmed it down it will be 1/4 to 1/2 som,e seed will be deper than
others.
when they grow you can thin out if you want,
This goes for all things, except beans and possibly peas where you do
sow roughly to station.
Most seed you will sow about 10 times as much as you want, then thin
to the required distance once they are growing, lettuce you can always
use the thinings as Baby leaves.
The directions on the packet are a rough guide only.

Thanks for the replys, really informative. I'm not started sowing outside yet, just sown five lots of seeds in the airing cupboard so far. I messed up on the begonias, I didn't use sand to thi the seeds out so did them again.

Reason I need to know is because I'm selling ther seed that I don't use one ebay.

On the instrcutions for Scabious it says "thin to 20cm (8") apart" and on the picture it says "25cm (10")
andother plant Zinnia Sprite mixed says "thin to 20cm (8") and the image says 25cm (10")

These things are approximate. Don't worry too much.

If you're selling surplus seed, consider holding back some in case the first lot of seedlings don't do well and you want a repeat sowing.

Definelty going to hold back, I lost all the flower plants I sowed last year.

Some of the Chillies and Tomatoes did okay though.

Further to all the earlier answers,just another tip, if your sowing very small or dark seeds, add some talum powder makes them easier to see on the dark compost ??