Suttons Seeds

Glossary

Everything you need to know about gardening, but were afraid to ask!

• Bolting – this is where the plant grows too fast due to being either being too wet or too dry, resulting in the stem shooting up and the plant ‘going to seed’. To avoid this simply grow a ‘bolt resistant’ variety eg. Beetroot Boltardy.
• Chitting – encouraging your potatoes to sprout shoots before you plant them to give them the best start. Leave them in an open box on a light windowsill until the shoots are approx 2cm long.
• Pinching out – to encourage the growth of bushy side shoots you will need to pinch out the growing tip of the plant. This can be done with veg, flowers and herbs. NB. This process is not required for trailing or hanging basket tomatoes.
• Cultivar – A plant that has been specifically selected and bred for its characteristics and is not usually cross-pollinated.
• Crop rotation – The process of moving families of crops around your vegetable plot each year in order to avoid pests and diseases and to maintain good fertile soil.
• Grafting – The union of two growing stems from two different plants; usually a strong root stock with a tasty fruiting variety or an abundant flowering variety. This produces a super-strong plant that is disease resistant and provides a much bigger crop over a longer period.
• Going to seed – Where a plant stops producing flowers and starts producing seeds.
• Hardy – A plant that has a high tolerance to the weather extremes (frost, drought) and can be planted directly outside.
• Half-hardy – A plant that needs to start growing indoors and can then planted out when the danger of frost is past.
• Annual – A plant that lives and flowers for one year only. These are ideal for sowing direct into the garden where you want them to flower.
• Perennial – A plant that lives for more than two years. Will generally be hardy so that it can survive the winter.
• Biennial – A plant that takes two years to reach fruiting or flowering.
• Hardening off – The process of acclimatising plants before planting them outside in the garden.
• Potting up/on – Transferring your seedlings into larger pots so they have more room to continue growing.
• Hybrid – The cross-breeding of two plants chosen for their particular qualities (Eg. disease resistance, tasty fruit, greater yields), resulting in a new variety that has all the good traits of the parent plants.
• Jiffy 7 peat pellets – expandable peat pellets used for giving seeds the best start. No mess, just add water!
• Pricking out - once your seedlings have germinated they need a bit more room to grow so need to be transplanted into a larger seed tray or individual containers to encourage growth.
• Thinning out – the removal of overcrowded seedlings - usually from outside sowings. These surplus seedlings are usually discarded or in the case of salad crops such as lettuce, can be eaten!.
• Succession cropping – The process of sowing seed every few weeks to ensure regular cropping throughout a season Eg. Sow lettuce seed every two weeks for salad leaves throughout the summer.
• Tilth – the physical characteristics of the soil, Ie. a good tilth - a finely raked, crumbly structure with the right moisture content.
• Germination – The sprouting of a dormant seed following the provision of water, warmth and light.
• Drill – A shallow groove in the soil prepared for sowing seeds.
• Widger / Dibber – Two tools that can be used to aid ‘pricking out’ and ‘potting on’. The Widger removes the seedling and the Dibber makes a hole in the compost for it to be placed into.