Outdoor sowings can really get started in April and I have already started to sow the following flower seeds in my garden which are annuals:

Clarkia: this elegant cottage flower is one of my favourite annuals. It reminds me of my childhood in the garden when I was as tall as the flowers and enjoyed walking through the flower border.

Otherwise hardy annuals like nasturtium, lavatera, and calendula can also be sown in April. In fact, I noticed this morning that calendulas from last year had self seeded and started to grow near my greenhouse!

I shall probably wait until the next sunny week end to sow more annual flowers. Unfortunately it’s been raining here and it is now cold but soon I shall sow these flowers: Phlox; and Californian Poppies – these are so easy to grow and self seed so you usually benefit from free flowers the following year.

Vegetable seeds to sow outdoors:

Potatoes: now is a good time to start planting your potato tubers. I have already sown some of my potatoes as you can see in my last growing potatoes update but I haven’t sown the Desiree maincrop variety yet.

I have also just sown some carrots (Amsterdam forcing variety), parsnips and Kale (black Tuscany variety) in my raised bed.

Indoor sowing of seeds:

Sunflowers: fun to grow, if you want to try something different I recommend the Teddy Bear sunflower variety which has lovely soft pompon-like flowers hence the name of Teddy bear.
Pepper: I recommend this particular variety which worked really well outdoors or in my greenhouse and produces elongated fruit: Tasty grill red F1 hybrid pepper.
Squash: I like to grow the butternut variety as it is reliable and tasty and which you can see in the above picture.
Pumpkins: this year I will try the ‘Invincible’ variety for the first time and will let you know how I get on. In the past I enjoyed growing the French Muscade pumpkin variety for its taste.

Recently, I have had a few disappointments with the cauliflower seeds which did not germinate so well and the portulaca seeds since only 2 seeds germinated into really tiny fragile seedlings. I think that portulaca is not so easy to grow and next year I shall not include it on my list of seeds.

Finally it’s not too late to continue to sow some of the seeds which I mentioned in my previous article on what to sow in March. Enjoy spring!