Little things mean a lot in lockdown

Marks & Spencer recently gave away ‘silly’ little seed pots…

During the coronavirus lockdown, despite still working full time at home, my attention has turned to growing things. Having neglected the garden for years I now have a bit more time and inclination to grow things in pots.

I have started in a small way with these free seeds from Marks & Spencer. Recently they were offering these Little Garden boxes – one free with every £20 spent in the food hall. Of course the scheme is mainly aimed at children, of which I have none, but I still thought I would have some fun myself with these things.

At least it was more environmentally friendly than the last free gifts from M&S, which were miniature imitations of some of their food favourites. I picked up one chicken soup (plastic) and one jumbo fish fingers (cardboard) before I realised what a terrible message was given by these little pieces of unnecessary clutter and decided to accept no more.

But back to the Little Garden…

I collected six before I stopped but now I wish I had accepted more – you don’t know what is inside until you open the box and I had two pansy, one radish, one micro cress, one forget-me-not and one pepper

This is what each box contains…

The kit contained a pot, dried disc of compost, seed mat and label

It was a case of just add water. The very clever disc of compost swelled up to make just enough compost to fill the pot. The seed mat was inserted before topping off with the last centimetre of growing medium.

I placed all six containers in an old Chinese takeaway container – this was March 31

First to germinate were the radishes – this is April 5

On the window ledge the seedlings were a little bit leggy – this is April 11

The last seeds to germinate were the peppers – this is April 15 – top row pansy, radish, pepper, bottom row pansy, micro cress, forget-me-not

I expect the fun stops here, as I have never been very good at transplanting seedlings into bigger pots and growing them on – and there were very few seeds in the first place. We shall see, but don’t expect me to mention this again if I fail miserably!