Free flower seeds – May

May growing with Cel

The spring season feels as though it’s moving on so quickly this year doesn’t it? With warmer temperatures in May, seeds will germinate and develop quickly. It’s a perfect time of year for sowing seeds directly into garden beds as the soil will have warmed up nicely. It’s a good option to have if your greenhouse is overflowing with seedlings!

I’m Cel Robertson and I’m growing the free flower seeds that BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine are giving away this year and I’ll be sharing my progress with you each month. I hope that you’ve been sowing your free seeds along with me and that your sunflowers, echium and strawflowers are growing on well.

• Click here for details of which seeds you can look forward to receiving when.
• Get growing advice now, for all 12 packs of free seeds.

This month’s free seeds are cosmos ‘Sensation Mixed’ and I’ve always found cosmos a fairly easy variety to germinate. The seeds are on the larger side which makes them easy to handle. If you are sowing your cosmos directly into beds, station sow a couple of seeds at 30cm spacings in the border; pre-water the soil so it is moist, make a shallow depression in the soil with a dibber (about 0.5cm deep) and drop in two seeds. Cover the seeds lightly with soil. When the seeds germinate, you can thin them out to a single plant to grown on – just be aware that you may need to protect your precious seedlings from slugs and snails.

You can also sow your cosmos seeds into pots or trays in the greenhouse to plant out into beds as small plants. I’ll be sowing my seeds into small coir pots. I’m going to fill each small pot with peat-free compost and lightly tamp down to firm the compost, and then I’ll stand the coir pots in a flat