Help With Growing Seeds

Hello everyone I am very new to this forum and this is my very first post. So hello to my new gardening friends and hope this will be one of many posts. so lets grow together!

The reason why I joined is, that I pretty awful at growing seeds and looking for advice off you guys?

I am based in London and started gardening in lockdown as there was nothing else to do as I was shielding and picked up a pair of secateurs and never looked back.

Unfortunately I do not have a greenhouse but did have a canvas grow house where the zip is now broken, I am going to buy one of those nice plastic grow houses, that retail off Amazon for about £120. I start my seed off in a spare room, where I have heat mats, seed trays, with plastic covers (B&Q) seed plug trays with LED lighting (Amazon) I have 5 bags of B&Q seed mix compost. I also have a bag of vermiculite and perlite.

Last year I put the above seed mix compost in the in the Amazon plug trays with LED lights, I then tried to harden them off too quickly and put them outside during the day and bring them in during the night, I was hoping I could start a seed production line, but this failed, teach me to mess with nature.

I have always had 100% success with Tomato, as I start these late. I have planted other trays of seed and put them in the spare on the bench for nothing to happen, both in trays and plugs.

As you can see I tried to spend money for better results, but still failed ;-( I think I am still making basic elementary mistakes. I have read what is said in the Gardening World magazine/programme and videos online about seed growing and they make it sound simple, but I still making mistakes. But now utterly confused and need help and guidance, hence why this is my first post, so be gentle with me. The problem with gardening media they tell you the dos and not the don'ts, So I was hoping I could post on here from stat to finish and you guys will be gentle and guide me and the end result will be lots of new plants and not going down the nursery where I have failed!

I have had very good success with summer seeds such as Wallflowers and Foxgloves, but struggle with spring seeds, this isn't helped as the season is very short to get it right.

 

I think you have basically answered your own question.
I started growing things from seed more than 50 yrs ago and back then there was no lighting in my price range and bottom heating was a bit iffy, mostly down to building your own propagator with heating cables.
I used the airing cupboard for germination for years, then window sills afer to harden off.

All the techy stuff just gets people to sow too early.

It obviously alter slightly depending on what you are growing, some things are tougher than others.
But in general I would say dont get caught up in the rush, often later sowings are stronger, due to better natural light and much easier to harden off.
I dont harden any tender stuff off until late April and mostly in May.

 

and .

I can't help you with seeds as I am useless but I can welcome you to the Forum.

 

Welcome @GreenFingeredPete ! Like @pete I have been growing seeds a long time (more like 60 years!) - unlike him, I always make mistakes.
It's very hard growing seeds under led lights - they're either too close or too far away. As Pete says, the tech tempts you to sow too early, and then the seedlings struggle. Apart from tomato, what are you trying to grow? If it's food plants, there are plenty of threads on here to help for chillies etc) and if it's flowers, there are people who are good with annuals, and some daft people like @pete and me who try random strange species.
But the key is not to go too soon for most things - you want there to be a bit of natural light and no frost by the time you're pricking out seedlings.
Keep at it - it's so worthwhile.

 

I never start my tomatoes until about the beginning of April. I don't have a greenhouse and it's not warm enough here to put them outside until mid-May at the earliest (and some years end of May) so it's no use having them outgrow the available windowsill space before then.

 

Thank you for all the replies so far, much appreciated!!!

Tomatoes are my last seed to go in, perhaps that is why they’re my most successful or are they a particular easy seed to grow? I never have success with petunias no matter how late I start them, I’m well aware they need light to germinate.

I wait to mid February to start my seeds for 2 reason, 1, it gives me a dry run to make mistakes and learn from mistakes for when I do a main batch, so not too concerned if these do fail 2, I’m impatient, lol.

So is there any non-tender plants I can start in the next couple of weeks? When is the ideal time to start seed growing? As I said I don’t have a greenhouse.,so therefore I don’t have much space, so it would be nice if I can do 2 lots or maybe 3?