Restocking My Seed Boxes for the New Growing Season
Hello friends,
It's seed buying time again, when New Zealand seed companies tempt gardeners with their favourite seed packets, along with a bunch of new exciting varieties. Before I placed any orders this year, I wanted to take stock of the seeds already stored in my Franchville 16 storage cases from Spotlight.
I may have been lasy last year and neglected to throw out empty seed packets as I sowed seeds throughout the season. As a result, my seed boxes looked far more full than what they actually were.
It took quite a while to work through every compartment in the storage cases, checking whether packets still contained seeds, noting expiry dates, and updating my seed database. By the time I finished, I had a clearer picture of which varieties were still in stock, and which ones needed replacing. My herb and vegetable seed stocks were in pretty good shape, but my flower seed stocks were heavily depleted. Many seed packets were nearly empty, and ones like cosmos and calendula had completely run out.
Knowing how depleted my flower seed stocks were, and how expensive they would be to replace, I opened about a million tabs in my web browser and got to work comparing varieties and prices from different seed suppliers. After many hours at the computer, I had narrowed down the varieties I wanted, worked out which suppliers offered the best prices, and was finally ready to begin placing orders with the following seed companies. These are just a few highlights from this year's seed order. There were many more packets than I could realistically include in one blog post!
From Kings Seeds, I mostly purchased a bunch of cosmos, herbs, zinnias, and viola and pansy varieties. I'm especially looking forward to growing the Zinderella range of zinnias this season. And yes, I also fell victim to the chocolate cosmos growing craze sweeping the gardening world right now.
From Egmont Seeds, I purchased a selection of herb, tomato, calendula, and marigold seeds, along with a large cut flower packet of Cosmos 'Fizzy White'. This is my favourite cosmos variety, and it's not easy to find in small packets, so I decided to splurge on a 300-seed packet. I'm sure they'll all get used eventually...even if it takes me a few seasons to get through them.
From Susie Ripley, I purchased several rarer flower varieties, along with strawflower and statice for drying. These were varieties I hadn't been able to source elsewhere, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with dried flowers this season.
And finally, from Crawford Road, I purchased several new-to-me calendula varieties, along with violas and some new cosmos and cornflower selections to trial in the garden this season.
Just when I thought all my seed buying was done, I discovered that Wild Flora was selling some rare flower seeds that were simply too tempting to resist. First on my list were seeds from the dahlia variety 'April Heather'. This collarette dahlia is a rare plant to source in New Zealand, and while I can't justify spending $100–$300 on a single tuber, I was more than happy to invest in a packet of its daughters for my dahlia breeding project.
Wild Flora also had progeny from several Floret zinnia and celosia varieties available for sale. These seeds were only offered in New Zealand during 2024 and can no longer be purchased directly, so when the opportunity came up, I couldn't resist. I'm looking forward to growing these varieties and seeing what interesting colours and forms appear in the next generation.
With all this seed purchasing completed, I ran out of space in my Francheville seed storage boxes. Fortunately, Spotlight had them on sale for 30% off, so my husband picked up two more for me. Hopefully they'll last me a little while. I find these boxes perfect for seed organisation, keeping everything tidy and easy to find when sowing season arrives.
I'm pleased with this year's seed purchases and looking forward to getting everything sown over the coming months. There are plenty of old favourites returning to my garden, along with many new varieties and a few exciting breeding projects to explore. Now comes the hard part—finding the time to sow everything, and the space to grow it all!
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Susie Ripley Gardening Seed Haul
Hello friends,
Recently after having cataract surgery, and not being allowed to do any gardening for two weeks afterward (due to infection and high eye pressure risk due to potentially getting my eye dirty, and lots of bending over), I got bored and decided to do some seed shopping from a local seed company, Susie Ripley Gardening. I found that she has a wonderful range of not so common seed varieties which match well with my gardening style.
I bought the following flower seed packets from her:
* Coreopsis Incredible Dwarf Mix
* Cornflower Mauve Ball
* Cornflower Pinkball
* Cosmos Double Click Rose Bon Bon
* Cosmos Double Click Snowpuff
* Dahlia Susie's Mix
* Dianthus Chabaud La France
* Nigella Delft Blue
The colours in the seed varieties I bought work well with my garden colour palette. And I'm particularly excited about Susie's dahlia mix as it has seeds in it from Floret's Petite dahlia varieties that grew last year, along with others. I didn't get Floret's petite dahlia variety seeds last year, and I'm quite sad now that I didn't invest in a packet. I'm hoping that there will be some pretty Floret dahlias in the mix.
Now I just have to impatiently wait for seed sowing to begin in early spring...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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