Baby Bedding Plants for a Fantastic Summer Display

Baby bedding plants can produce a fantastic summer display!

If your fingers are pink and not green and if the seeds you sow never seem to come up, then growing pre-germinated seedlings is for you!

In fact buying pots of seedling bedding plants is for everyone whether you are a first time gardener or you have been at it all your life.

 

Where to get them

Most retail nurseries and garden centres will have a wide choice of these little plants. What’s more they are ready to take home right now! Kinder Garden Plant stockists can be found here.

But there are lots of online sellers of these baby bedding plants too. For instance Gardening Direct , Thompson and Morgan and Brookside Nursery.

It’s great fun and very satisfying to grow your own bedding plants this way.

 

What are plug plants?

The seedlings are carefully sown in ideal conditions by the grower. This produces perfect germination every time.

It can be hard to achieve this in the average 8 by 6 ft garden greenhouse and even more difficult on a windowsill.

Seed is sown into trays that have tiny compartments which are called ‘cells’ or ‘plugs’.

 

 

 

Growing them on

But to grow these little plants on is so easy! A bright windowsill is all you need, but if you have a conservatory or greenhouse with a little heat, so much the better.

If you haven’t tackled this before, then stick to the sure-fired easy to grow and reliable performers.

I suggest trying Busy Lizzies [Impatiens], Pelargonium (Geraniums), Petunias, Fibrous Rooted Begonias and Lobelia first.

Take care transferring and spacing them into trays of fresh peat free potting compost.

Never handle the stems but hold them gently by their leaves. Try to keep as many of the roots intact as possible.

You will find that after gently watering them in you will see growth in just a few days and soon you will be wanting to get them outside.

 

Prepping them for life outside

However, a word of caution, most of these plants will not tolerate hard frost! They will need to be ‘hardened off’ first.

Do this by gradually acclimatizing the plants to the brighter light and cooler temperature outside. Spread this toughening up over a couple of weeks. Do resist the temptation to plant them out until the risk of frost is gone. This is normally mid May in lowland UK.

The great advantage of pre-germinated seedlings is that the ones offered are usually the very best variety of baby bedding plants!

This will save your pocket too as it would often cost you as much to buy a seed packet as you would pay for a pot of 20 to 30 already growing seedlings!

So what are you waiting for, it really is easy to grow baby bedding plants and lots of fun too!

You can read about plug plants and their bigger brothers here.

I’ve written about KinderGarden Plants here too.