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Tin of seed packets dated 2019 to 2023, which are worth sowing and which go straight in the bin

Ten seeds from the packet, damp kitchen roll, fold it, into a labelled sandwich bag, somewhere warm like the top of the fridge. Check at day seven and again at day ten to fourteen depending on the crop, parsnip and celery are slow so give them longer. Count what has actually pushed a root out. Eight of ten is a good packet, sow normally. Five of ten is usable, sow twice as thick. Two of ten means you are wasting bed space and the packet is a bin job. It costs you one sheet of kitchen roll and no bed space, and you can run twelve packets at once in one tray of bags. Do the tests now for the ones you would sow first, not all forty in one go.

167 · in/veg-patch ·