Growing a Cottage Garden by Seed 🌱 Budget Grow Lights & What I Sowed

I have a lovely video for you this week, if I do say so myself. I am going to set up a budget friendly DIY seed station so we can grow our own cottage garden. We've finally had some sunshine so I'm going to bring you on a beautiful walk as well. And let's have a debate about seed soil and if it's a scam. Pop the kettle settle in and I hope you enjoy this video. Before I begin on my seed sowing journey for 2025 I needed to pop to the shop. Any excuse to go to the garden centre. I actually wanted to see if I could pick up some seed compost but in a few minutes I'm actually going to chat about seed compost and is it a bit of a scam? But anyway, any excuse to have a little nosy round, see what bulbs are grown and what plants have come into the garden centre. Also I went to Deelts just because I was passing. Now something I've noticed is I'm actually getting a lot of stuff for seed sowing from Lidl and Aldi this week. And they are so much cheaper compared to the stuff that's in the garden centre. So propagation sets, I was just having a look at the price of the ones in Woody's. So if you do have a Lidl or Aldi, both of them seem to have seed sowing equipment this week and it's a fraction of the price. Also when things are cheaper there is the argument is the quality going to be any good but if you're just starting out with your seed sowing and you are on a budget then obviously try the cheaper stuff and see. The containers that I did get out of Lidl seem to be quite strong and sturdy in comparison to the ones that I got last year from the garden centre. When I was walking past Deelts I saw a big sign in the window that said they had garden stuff so I went in to have a little look. Now if I'm being brutally honest the stuff was better that was in Lidl and Aldi but I do know that their stuff is only on the special buy for the week or two weeks and then it's kind of gone. They did have some of the paper seed trays and there was a couple of bits. They had a lot of bulbs, they had some summer bulbs and they had some roses and then there was things like you know plant food and stuff but I haven't used these before so I don't know what they're like. I have used stuff from Deelts a good couple of years ago but I don't know what the stuff is like now. Hello, you will have to excuse my greasy hair because I was like if I'm going to be in the garden I ain't washing my hair, we have to time hair wash day. My ladies will understand, time in your hair wash day. Now I went down a rabbit hole of seed compost, also we are in the park, I'm going to do my walk and then I'm going to go to the wild garden. Last week's video was torrential rain, we didn't get to go. I will promise you once I do my 5k we are on our way. Seed compost. I went down a rabbit hole and I'd love to get your opinion as well. Is seed compost a gimmick? I was doing a bit of the Googling and the YouTubing and last year my seed sowing journey wasn't amazing, the weather wasn't great and I just relied on my greenhouse. I had no grow lights, I did no heat mats, nothing additional. Just put them in compost, in a seed tray, propagator lid, germination was awful. I'd say out of all the seeds like a third of the seed tray would germinate for me. I remember last year chatting to a couple of you and you were saying the similar thing. We had a very rainy spring last year in Ireland and I think in parts of the UK as well. So this year I feel like with the seeds I think I need to do something a little extra to get a higher yield. So last year I did actually use seed compost. So the rabbit hole I went down was, some people say seed compost is a bit of a gimmick and just save normal compost. But then the other side of the argument is you don't want to introduce any bacteria to your seed, your seedling, because it can't handle it. So if you take compost out of the garden that will have lots of different bacteria and fungi and the seed, it could damage the seed or the seed might not germinate or whatever. I mean there's also the argument of when you sow directly into the soil, you're sowing into soil that's full of both healthy and possibly non-healthy bacteria. But we've to treat our seedlings like little babies. So I didn't get any seed compost in the garden centre because it was sold out, the girl was like it's gone, it flies out really quickly. So my local people are obviously buying the seed compost. I think I have half a bag of seed compost from last year in the greenhouse. So we can do a little experiment and I can do one or two, I'd say I have enough for two trays of seeds and then I just got some young compost. Also a lot of people kind of say, and I tend to agree, a lot of, when you go to the garden centre and there's all these different composts for different things, like one compost, two, three, four, a lot of people say that's a bit gimmicky as well. You can just add things to your compost, whether it's perlite or vermiculite and change the structure of it depending on the plant. Obviously if it's ericaceous soil, like I'm not a soil expert at all. And actually I was on, last week I was on RT with Mary Stanton and these are the questions I should have asked her. She's a fountain of knowledge, I love Mary, such a lovely woman. Actually you can listen back to that on playback. So it was the 5th of March, no, it wasn't, it was the 25th of February. It was the 25th of February, RT won Clareburn and we were on at 11.45 so we were the last people on, we were the last contributors on. We have a go on there, yeah, seed compost, do you use it or do you just save your multi-purpose and get on with it? Are you, yeah. And also, I'm not sowing, if I had big poly tunnels and I was relying on my seed to bring me money, as in let's say I was growing vegetables or I was growing plants to sell and I was a, you know, production, I am just a hobby gardener. I just want me zinnias to do better than they did last year, me cosmos and me bits like. Yeah, so obviously I can experiment and I'm a bit more lax but there's professionals out there who obviously rely on the soil health to get them seeds going because that's their livelihood. I was also saying in last week's video just about, yeah, feeling the fatigue. Obviously you can see it's a sunny day today and I've come to the conclusion that I, my mood is the Irish weather. It will be sunny and then the rain will come, hail will come and then two minutes later it's sunny again. But a couple of you, I was actually just looking at the, sometimes what I do when I'm sitting having my coffee, I go through the YouTube comments and yeah, so if you ever get like a reply at 10 or 11am, I'm probably sitting in the car drinking me coffee replying to the comments. But one thing I like, like obviously I don't want to be moaning and giving out but sometimes when I do, people find it relatable and it makes them feel like less alone. So a couple of people were saying like, yeah, they're feeling that kind of February fatigue. Like March is great because the clocks are going to change and do you know what I've noticed is that I had this epiphany as I was driving here, I'm, and I'm sure some of you can relate. I'm always trying to fix myself when there's probably nothing wrong. So what I mean by that is, so I actually had a, I had a blood test on Friday and I got the results this morning and they were grand. The only thing that was down was my folic acid was slightly down, um, but nothing like not dangerously low. So surprisingly, I actually had vitamin D and a few people had said, you know, vitamin D this time of year, you're probably lacking and you know, but I think being outside all over winter and doing the walks, even when I don't want to at times, that has kept my vitamin D up. Now granted it was on the lower end of acceptable, um, like it was, it was green, but it was at the bottom of the green, um, but I actually had vitamin D, but where I'm gone off topic again, we're always trying to fix ourselves or at least I am, um, and instead, so it might be, you know, learning away, you know, therapy and anxiety is if you just accept instead of being like, oh no, I have a bad mood, I must try and fix this. So I think maybe that's why I'm exhausted because I'm always trying to fix something or myself when actually instead, if I'm just, well, let's accept this and even the feeling of acceptance just gives you, your energy just kind of relaxes, doesn't it? So I'm going to try and just accept it for a little bit instead of trying to push upstream. Isn't that the phrase when you're trying to swim against the current, I feel like that's what I do sometimes, swimming against the current. So I, I'm glad that some of you could relate to the kind of, yeah, just that kind of feeling of mental fatigue this time of year. Some people were saying it's, you could be just coming to the end of the winter and we're all just kind of tired of the winter, aren't we? And I suppose you have to remember we did have a lousy summer last year, didn't we? And I haven't had a sun holiday, like I didn't go away last, oh no, I did. I went away in April last year, I went to Morocco. So I haven't had, I was in London for work, but I haven't had, I haven't had a holiday. I am going away with my niece and nephew very soon, I'm really excited. My niece and nephew watch the channel, so I don't want to say anymore, but I will in the future. So I'm looking forward to that, so that's going to be a nice trip. It's not to the sun, but it's to somewhere really fun. So I think that will boost my energy. So I am going to go do me 5k, and then when I come back, we will go to the wild garden and, because I just know the spring bulbs are going to be bulbing and I can have a little look. And then when I go back, we can set up our seed station. And also, you don't have to start your seeds, like some people in Canada and America still have snow, so don't go, just because you see me doing something, go by your climate, if that makes sense. You don't have to do what I'm doing at this time. You might be a few weeks behind, you could be a few weeks early, you could be in Australia and you're getting ready for your autumn bulbs. So as always, you don't have to do what I'm doing. I never want anyone to feel pressure, like, oh my god, she's doing her seeds. I'm not going to do them all, I'm only going to do a few. Okay, beautiful day. I'm going to swallow this and off I go. The difference between when I was here in January and March, so you can see all of the new growth and a lot of the beds look like they've had some mulch. There's loads of spring bulbs, loads of hellebores, there's still some snowdrops as well. I'm after seeing loads of honeybees going around and then you've got like some cyclamen in here. It's just looking, you know what, when you see that new growth, it just makes any old dead growth just disappear, your eye is just drawn to the new and the green. Like, this is absolutely beautiful. This is a tonic, this is serotonin and actually if you look at this hellebore, and I'm going to just move the camera down, if you look down here, there is so many bees. So I think that looks like borage but I'm not sure if it is, the purple flower there. Maybe it's a variety of borage but it's full of bees, full of honeybees, Apis melliferae and then this hellebore as well. There's a little bee buzzing around and I was saying in last week's video when I was at the bees that they were coming in with pollen baskets. So this is what they were foraging because I was wondering, like, what are they foraging? But yeah, that's probably what it is and a lot of the trees are starting to, a lot of the winter trees are coming into flower as well. I was chatting to Mary last week, I was saying about my tree that's flowering and she was saying that's a winter prunus, so it has a darker bark and she was saying like the ones that flower in I think like May time, that's a summer variety. So the variety I have that flowers late February into March is a winter prunus or winter variety. So there you are. The time has come to create a seed sowing station and I am experimenting with some grow light. Now I got really lucky with this shelf unit. I saw a shelving unit in a Lidl and it was made with metal and it had wood slats that go across and it was kind of heavy but it was €25 but I went into a different Lidl planning to buy that one and then I found this one. This one is made from a hard recycled plastic and it's much more lightweight and what I like about this is, as you can see when it's all flat packed, it's much easier for me to store this because I only need this while I am sowing seeds. If you remember last year's seed sowing video, I had made tables to put the seeds on. I was using my woodwork table legs and I was making makeshift tables with planks across them. This shelving unit is absolutely perfect and I can also put it into two halves so that it will fit in the greenhouse better. Also I was delighted when I opened it up to see that there's like these, I'm going to call them drainage holes but they are perfect as drainage holes. I don't think they manufactured it to be a garden shelf but if you come across this, it is a perfect garden shelf but there is these little holes on it which make it absolutely perfect for me to hang grow lights off it so I can really easily with a cable tie hang the lights off the shelf. So this was a happy accident. If you come across one of these in Lidl, snap it up. It was the same price but I think it's going to be better for your seed sowing and you could probably fit it in one of the, you know those pop-up tent greenhouses that you walk into? They also had one of them in Aldi for £34.99 and I reckon you could fit this shelf inside of it. Okay, this was not what I had in mind. Things have escalated. I was like I'll just get some grow lights and you know this has turned into, you know I think if the guards saw the light coming from this room, they would think I was growing some funny stuff. I was just going to just do, you know, a little shelf and a grow light but you know what? We're going all out. This also took longer to set up than expected and there is feet off it. So I could do, well I don't know, there's little legs that go on this. I have them here. Ignore the state of this. So there's these little things but I just kept it on the flat because you probably saw when I was putting it together, it's a bit buckety but like it's grand for what we want it for which is growing funny stuff. Now we're not growing anything funny. Yeah, so this has turned into, yeah, I also have a bit of space on top but I've used all the lights. So there was one, two, three, there was four lights in that pack and they're put on with cable ties. The cable ties did come. So there's this little clip and I am just getting really lucky with how things have just fallen into place because there's little grids and I was able to just stick it on whereas the original shelf I was going to buy was a wooden, was a wood surface. So if you can find one of these in little, snap it up because even like if you had this in a greenhouse or a polytunnel, because it's plastic, it'll last and it also has little drainage holes so even if you had obviously no electricity, no grow lights and you were watering stuff, it drains through. So I hope you can get your hands on one of these. So the sun has gone in and I've lost all motivation. It's now half four, Bon has come in, he's looking for his dinner. I'm going to tidy up my mess and then in the morning what I'll do is I'll get all my seed stuff that I started washing some of them and I can actually do the seed sown tomorrow because you know when your brain needs to shift from doing all of this to actually getting in the flow to sow some seeds but before I go, I picked these up yesterday in Aldi for two euro and last year I paid I think eight, nine, ten euro for ones out of Woody's, they were the grocer ones. Now I don't know like the difference in the quality but if you are looking for these paper seed ones, they had two different sizes in Aldi. That was Sunday just gone, I got these so it's recent enough. So yeah, I'm going to go to jail because I did not mean to have such a fantabulous seed propagation station. Do you think my local police will think I am growing funny stuff? Also I think they go on a timer as well, I do have a timer switched from the Christmas tree but I think the instruction said if you stick this on at eight in the morning it will turn off at eight. I think you can set it for ten hours, eight to ten hours. Also another thing, my electricity bill, I'll have to think about that but I think what I'll do is maybe eight hours so if I put it on, I think some seeds need eight to ten hours so let's see if we can get away with eight but yeah this is pretty fancy, I hope it works. Now you might be wondering why do you have this here and not in your greenhouse? So I have it here, I do have an electricity outlet in my greenhouse but it's warmer in my office and I'm able to keep a closer eye on it and I also have more outlets in the office if I need to. So far I'm going to be using two plugs. So this is my experiment, I got some grow lights off Amazon, I'll pop a link to them. Now I have to start off by saying I am not a grow light expert or anything like that and I'm sure there's different wattages and different spectrums of light when it comes to seeds so I'm going in pretty amateur but I just wanted to level up on last year because something I have realised is the lighting in March I don't think is sufficient in my greenhouse to get the seeds going. So last year I did have some successes, I did get things going but like a third of the seed trade germinated. So this room is warmer and I have the artificial light on it so let's see if I can have a better look with germination. The lighting is really good in the greenhouse in April as the lighting changes. So what I can do is I can bring the seedlings then into the greenhouse once they've gotten going where they can continue to grow on, I'll pop them on and then they'll be ready to go outside. So that is my rough plan. When it comes to sowing the seed, I sieved the soil as best I could. So some people will use multipurpose compost that you get in the garden centre or that they already have in their composter and they will sieve it until it is really really fine. I actually don't know why you do this for seedlings, I'm going to assume that the seed is really fine in itself and that lovely fine soil makes it easier for it to push through and grow roots but that is just me making an assumption. If you have the correct answer, please leave it in the comments section. So I have my soil nice and thin and I'm literally popping it into the pots and then I water the seed tray before adding the seed because what can happen is, and it's happened me in the past, I have pushed my seeds into the soil, I'll come along with my big heavy watering can and plop the water, I don't know where the seed has gone, which now that I say this out loud, that was probably my problem last year. So I use the little mist setting that is on my hose to mist over the soil, get it lovely and wet but not obviously too wet and soggy, I just want it nice and damp but not drenched. And then I will pop my seeds into it, the seeds that I'm using, so today I am sowing some cosmos, some zinnias, some cornflowers, some hiliantis and some lemon balm. I'm just trying to think, did I sow anything else? And this is just my first round I suppose of seed sowing today, I'm not going to try and get everything done in one day, I think it's nice to just tip away at it but I also ran out of compost and the little paper pots as well so I do need any excuse to go to the garden centre, we could go to a different garden centre next time and I can pick up supplies and then I can start sowing the rest but I just wanted to get started because it is March but like what I said earlier in the video, if you are still in a growing zone where the weather is quite cool and it's very wintry, don't force start things just because you know you see other people doing it, definitely garden at your own pace. Ok so I've done two trays of cornflowers because I really want to grow them for drying, dried flowers, lovely cut flower but also really nice as a dried flower, cosmos cupcake but it's a packet from last year so we'll see if that germinates, I have another packet but I ran out of seed, I've got some hiliantis at the back, two trays of cosmos cupcake actually, then I have, what's that bug? What is that? Oh, Californian poppy, some Californian poppies, now I know you could probably direct sow them into the seed and again I'm growing them for a pretty cut flower, then I have a zinnias, I just did one tray and the reason why I did the zinnias in those pots is because apparently zinnias don't like their roots to be disturbed so if you prick them out and pot them on, I think monday dawn said it, I don't know, it was on gardeners world once, so I've put them in that pot they can go directly into the ground, I ran out of my little pots but that's just some lemon balm so I can make some lemon balm tea, lovely, I think it's a herb, is it? Anyway as you can see I still have lots of seeds, oh you're so cute, oh I love how she sparkles in the sunshine, so I have been saying, I'm staying really still so bug doesn't jump out my nose, can I just have a cuddle? There's nothing like cuddling your cat and giving them a good sniff, anyway, she smells like bark, that's all I saw today because I ran out of, sorry I cannot think because I have a cat, yeah I ran out of compost, seed compost and multi-purpose to sit in and all that and I just wanted to get started and then I was like, do you know what, this is a good thing because I was saying how just in the other garden videos from January, February that I'm not going to be trying to do everything all at once, I've, I hang up my perfectionist trying to do everything and do everything right for this year and grand, so I'm going to, during the week when I'm pottering and if I go to the garden centre I will pick up the few bits that I need because I have loads of seeds I want to sow, also I've got a packet of this from last year, I mean Magis, you know I'm saying that wrong, it's a hue garden, oh Bishop's Weed, um hardy annual, I wanted this again for cut flower or dry flower, direct sow outdoors where they are to grow from April to June in full sun semi-shade, um yeah these have nice height and I just saw, very nice, and I also have some asparagus because, is it asparagus? The seed is in the greenhouse, um because I wanted to try that as well as like a cut flower, I don't think it's artichoke, artichoke, because I saw artichokes in the wilds garden in Ashdown and they were beautiful, I was like what are they? And they were artichokes, so yeah I still have lots of seeds I want to do but I'll let you know I'm going to turn on, I'm going to move that shelf up so I just have two shelves lighting because I don't want me electricity bills to be out the window, um and yeah I'll let you know how I get on with the light up situation and if my electricity bill's going to be through the roof but it would be nice to see, like if I do get better germination then it will be a sign that I'm not getting enough light at this time of the year in the greenhouse, so maybe I do need that extra bit of help, obviously with the light changing, like during the summer the greenhouse gets loads of light but there's a lesson for you, if you are positioning your greenhouse for seeds, starting, check the position, oh hang on there's my doorbell, I better go, check the position of your greenhouse, I will see you later