ICE planting seeds for their competition

As you may remember last week I was sent a load of lovely organic seeds from  The Organic Gardening Catalogue by the nice folk at Ice   Ice is a new, flexible customer reward programme which identifies sustainable products and services, from high-street retailers to small independent businesses, presents them to you in a one-stop shop and rewards you generously when you buy them via Ice.

Ice say on their website that

Our mission is to mitigate climate change via mass consumer purchase power. By changing small things we do and buy every day, together we can minimise harm to the environment, help mitigate climate change and preserve the ice caps.

Ice promotes sustainable living and keeping things organic, including encouraging more people to grow their own fruit and vegetables from home. As part of this ideal, Ice is running a ‘Grow Your Own’ competition alongside The Organic Gardening Catalogue (one of its partners) to encourage home grown, sustainable produce and they asked me if I would take part :) hence the collection of lovely seeds they have sent me

I have been a long time user of organic seeds from The Organic Gardening Catalogue so was delighted to be asked to join in with this competition. 

So tonight I sowed the  seeds (Beetroot, Pak Choi, Salad leaves, Carrots, Radish, Rocket) and in the next few weeks will be giving regular updates on their progress as well as hints and tips on how to sow them and (hopefully) how well they grow. I may even provide you with some recipe hints for using the crops :-) 

I decided to use these troughs to grow my seeds in as I can keep them seperated from all the other planting I have done.

I used Fertile Fibre Multipurpose growing medium - peat free, coir based. Other peat free growing media is available - please do NOT use peat based ones!

Fill the container to within an inch or so of the top

Don't plant too many seeds!

Seeds on the surface

Cover with a light sprinkling of growing medium - a good rule of thumb is to use about  the same thickness of growing medium as the size of the seed

make sure you label what you have sown in the container and also when you sowed it!

Stand the containers in a tray of water to get them well wetted and be careful about watering from the top until the seedlings are well grown, as otherwise you risk washing away the seedlings if you water from the top. Watering by standing in a tray of water is safer.

 So, seedlings planted and I will keep you all updated as to how they progress.