Problems germinating seeds

Seed sowing this year has been a challenge. I never usually have issues growing the majority of my plants for the kitchen and ornamental gardens from seed. It is much cheaper than buying plants and you have a far greater choice of variety. I am also a sucker for seed catalogues, I can fill hours studying them, formulating plans for the coming years produce and then being completely distracted by some gem I just have to have. Over the years I have accumulated three tins worth of seeds, a few from each packet used each year. With moving house and renovating our new home I hadn’t used the majority of the seed since 2012. I was full of eager enthusiasm to start sowing this year. As you can imagine I was incredibly frustrated when my normally fail safe seed would not germinate. Cosmos Purity, Calendula Indian Prince and my shallots did nothing, I sowed them again thinking maybe it was too early, but nothing emerged. All my new seeds germinated fine. It was when I started to look at the dates on the back of the old packets that my error clicked. My seed collection was old and worthless. I have cleared out and binned all the failed packets. Fortunately I do have a range of plants that did germinate, but, a trip to our local garden centre today was essential. A cutting garden without Cosmos Purity and a Calendula was unthinkable. Seed sown and fingers crossed for quick germination. Another valuable gardening lesson learnt the hard way!

seedlingsSeedlings that I did manage to germinate.