How to sow your Grow Together seed bundle

We have just passed the spring equinox which means the days are now longer than the nights and it is finally time to begin sowing seeds!

In your DBT Grow Together seed bundle, you will find a mix of Paris Market 5 carrots, Iceberg lettuce, Terenzo F1 tomatoes, pot marigolds and Giant Yellow Single sunflowers. You will sow the majority of these seeds in the same way, which we will demonstrate further down in this article – however, there are some vegetables that want to be treated a little differently!

Direct sow your carrots

Any vegetable that develops a taproot will always prefer to be planted directly where it will grow as it likes minimal disturbance of its roots. This means that you shouldn’t bother to sow any carrots or parsnips into trays or individual pots first. Instead, sow the seed directly into the container or bed that you intend to harvest them from. This is true of the carrots included in your seed bundle, even though they are a variety which does not grow a long taproot like traditional carrots do!

If you are completely new to sowing seeds, this method is calling ‘direct sowing’ and this video from the RHS provides an excellent explanation on how to prepare your growing area before sowing the seed.

Tips for indoor sowing

You will need to start the rest of your Grow Together seeds off inside your home or greenhouse in trays or pots. Most seeds will need a consistent temperature of around 12-17 degrees C to germinate so you must ensure they will be kept in a warm place before you start. Keeping your pots somewhere that is too cold is one of the key reasons that seeds fail to germinate.

When you’ve chosen a suitable spot for your seedlings to live, it’s time to start filling your pots or trays up with compost. Be sure to not press down too hard and push all the oxygen out of your compost. Just tapping the pot down a few times will be enough to remove any air pockets and create a level surface for sowing. If your compost is too compacted it can lead to common issues like dampening off, which we will discuss in a later blog post.

If you are a complete beginner to seed sowing, we recommend that you sow all of your Grow Together seeds individually in their own pot or module. This means that you will not have to prick your seedlings out at a later date which reduces the risk of you accidentally killing them. It is really important to make sure you label your pots and trays clearly so that you know what is planted where. Rather than buying labels, we will often cut up an empty and clean plastic milk bottle and use permanent marker to record what we have sown.

This short snippet from an RHS video demonstrates how to sow broccoli seeds and it is equally applicable to sowing your Grow Together seeds.

Watering your seedlings

Seedlings can be fussy little things, and whilst seeds need enough moisture to burst open from their protective covers, they also don’t like to be sat around in too much water when they are growing.

Check your pots and trays daily to ensure that the compost is moist but not wet. When the compost is visibly drying out, water your seeds as finely as possible. Don’t drench them as this can cause the stems to rot.

We hope that this article helps you to feel confident in sowing your new seeds but if you have any questions you can always get in touch at enquiries@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com. Happy sowing!

I’ve not received a password reset email?

Be sure to check spam folders, Some email providers may consider the email to be a spam email and automatically file it into your spam folder.

The email is not in my Spam folder?

Some email providers may have very strict spam blocking in place. If this is happening you can add our email address to your ‘white list’

To do this please follow the instructions in the below links, by choosing your mail provider and adding the email: “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” to your whitelist.

AOL

Add the “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” to your AOL address book:

Click the “Mail Options” menu and select “Address Book”.
Inside the “Address Book” window, click the “Add” button.
Inside the “Address Card for New Contact” window cut and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the “Other E-Mail” field.
Make our From address the “Primary E-Mail” address by checking the associated check box to the right of it.
Click the “Save” button.

If the mailing is in your SPAM Folder, you can open the email and click the “This Is Not Spam” button.

Gmail

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Gmail Contacts List:

Click “Contacts” along the left side of any Gmail page.
Click “Create Contact”.
Copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the primary email address dialog box.
Click “Save”.

If the mailing is in your SPAM folder, check the box next to the mailing and click the “Not Spam” button along the top.

Hotmail/Outlook/Live

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Hotmail Safe List:

Open your mailbox and click “Options” (upper right hand corner).
Click the “Junk E-Mail Protection” link.
Select the “Safe List” link.
Copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the dialog box titled “Type an address or domain”.
Click the “Add” button next to the dialog box.

If the mailing is in your “Junk E-Mail Folder”, open the email and click the “Not Junk” button.

You should also check that the mailing’s email address is not in your Blocked Senders list. You can find your Blocked Senders list by following the directions above and going to “Blocked Senders List” instead of “Safe List”. If you see the mailing’s from address on this list, select it and click the Remove button.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Thunderbird Address Book and configure your Junk Mail Controls to white list your address book.

Add an address into your Personal Address Book:

Click the “Address Book” button.
Make sure the Personal Address Book is highlighted.
Click the “New Card” button.
Under the “Contact” tab, copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the Email dialog box.
Click “OK”.

White list your Personal Address Book:

From the main drop down menu, select “Tools –< Junk Mail Controls..."
This will launch the Junk Mail Controls window that has two tabs: Settings and Adaptive Filter
Under the Settings tab, update the “White Lists” module by selecting Personal Address Book from the pull down menu and then check mark the box next to “Do not mark messages as junk mail”.
Click “OK”.

If the mailing is in your junk folder, right-click the mailing and choose “Mark –< As Not Junk".[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title="Netscape Mail" tab_id="1498728551530-a54d18f1-2c51"][vc_column_text]Set up a filter to redirect the mailing you want to receive into your inbox:

From the Edit drop down menu, select “Message Filters”.
Click “New”, and give the new filter a name (e.g. “Whitelist”).
Change the drop down on the left to “sender” and the one in the middle to “is”.
Copy and paste username@domain.com into the box on the right.
Make the bottom two drop downs “Move to folder” and “Inbox”.
Click “OK”.
Make sure that your new filter is located at the top of the Message Filter list so it is run before any spam filter.

Outlook 2003/2007

Add the address you want to receive mailings from to your Safe Senders list:

On the Tools menu, click “Options”.
On the Preferences tab, click “Junk E-mail”.
On the Safe Senders tab, click “Add”.
In the Add address box, copy and paste in username@domain.com and click OK.

If you are using a different version of Outlook you can add the mailers From address to your Address Book. This can be done by opening the email, right clicking the From address, and selecting “Add To Contacts”. You can also access your Address Book via the tools drop down menu.

Yahoo

Set up a filter to redirect the mailing you want to receive in your inbox:

Open your mailbox and click on “Mail Options” (upper right hand corner).
Select “Filters” under the Management column.
Click the “Add” button on the Filters page.
In the “From header:” row, make the drop down “contains” and put the mailer’s from address username@domain.com in the box.
At the bottom of the page Click the “Choose Folder” pull down menu and select “Inbox”.
Click the “Add Filter” button.

If the mailing is in your Yahoo Bulk Folder open the email and click the “Not Spam” button. You should also check that the mailing’s email address is not in your “Blocked Addresses” list. You can find your “Blocked Addresses” list by clicking “Mail Options” and then clicking the “Blocked Addresses” link under the Spam column. If you see the mailing’s from address on this list, select it and click the “Remove Block” button.

Others

The most common way to whitelist an address is to add it to your address book, white list, or safe list. There is no universal way to whitelist an address, so if this is not an option, you will have to consult the help section associated with your email application. They should have instructions on how to whitelist an address there.