The 7 best seeds to sow this autumn

Screw the rest, keep it simple, sow these seeds now!

Welcome to Lo fi life, a cheerfully unsophisticated newsletter about gardening, cooking and things that are good. Not subscribed yet? Click the button:

---

Notes:

• Today’s full newsletter is only available to paid subscribers and members of The Wild Garden club.

• It’s a guide to my 7 favourite seeds to sow in autumn. They are easy, lovely and give you great bang for your buck. If you only sow 7 seeds this season, make it these guys!

• If you’d like to read it in full (and to access all of my member-only guides, newsletters, recipes and videos), consider becoming a paying member of Lo fi Life, or upgrading your subscription and becoming a member of my Wild Garden club (you can do this by clicking the button below).

---

There are, it must be said, a near-infinite number of amazing things you can grow from seed. There are flowers that bloom as bright as children’s crayons, pumpkins that grow so large it takes several grown men to lift them. You can grow baobabs from seed and moonflower vines that twist up the side of your house, opening their pale, fragrant faces to the moon at dusk. With so much choice and so many wonderful possibilities, the easiest thing to do is... get overwhelmed and sow nothing.

Whoops.

So, I figure we need to consolidate things a little. We need to pare it back, keep it simple. You can, of course, sow a hell of a lot more plants than the 7 I am going to tell you about today, but if you are just starting out, if you want a few reliable, good value, tasty and beautiful things to grow this autumn, these are the 7 seeds for you.

These seeds can all be sown direct, they’re all pretty tough and - I find - not too susceptible to being nibbled by bugs. Some you’ll grow for the flowers, some you’ll grow to eat, and some will give you both flowers and food. Plant one, plant them all.

Sweet peas

I’m starting with sweet peas because it is my own personal campaign to get as many people sowing sweet pea seeds this autumn as is humanly possible. I dream of a world where the streets are lined with these obscenely gorgeous flowers, the air filled with their heady, intoxicating scent. To this end, I have already written a whole guide to growing sweet peas, which you can read here. For now, I will just say this: there can never be enough sweet peas in the world. Plant some!

Coriander

Coriander needs a re-brand. For far too long, gardeners have shaken their heads in despair each time this delicious herb stops producing its tender, flavoursome winter leaves, grows tall and sinewy and bursts into lacy spring flowers. Which, to me, is pure madness. Have you SEEN these flowers?? Do you REALISE how bloody beautiful they are!?

We grow a close relative of coriander - Queen Anne’s lace - precisely for these gorgeous blooms, but when our coriander flowers (or ‘bolts’) we feel we’ve somehow failed. So first off, I want to disabuse you of that notion. Coriander is a fantastic plant for your gardens because of its spring blooms, not in spite of them. And the best way to get the most out of your coriander plant is simply to plant it in autumn, so you can enjoy a nice long harvest window of the leaves before the flowers arrive.

What’s more, after your coriander flowers finish in the springtime, they will reward you with homegrown coriander seeds that you can re-sow or use in the kitchen! My biggest tip with coriander plants is just leave them alone to do their thing. Pick and enjoy the leaves all winter, revel in the spring blooms and watch eagerly as the flowers fade and are replaced with small green berries (I’ve heard these are also delicious to cook with), which slowly dry into brown seeds that can be crushed and added to so many dishes (imagine guacamole flavoured with your own homegrown, lightly toasted coriander seeds!!)

Coriander seedlings are quite delicate so the seeds are best sown direct (0.5-1cm deep) to avoid having to shift the plants later. You can grow them in your garden beds or pots at least 20cm deep, with good quality potting mix. To extend your harvest, sow just a few seeds every 2-3 weeks through autumn. You can also sow seeds in early spring for a second harvest, but they may flower once the warm weather arrives.

If you’re growing your coriander through late autumn and winter it will do best in full sun. If you’re growing it in warm weather, look for a position that gets morning sun and afternoon shade - this will extend your harvest before the flowers arrive. Grow 4-6 plants per person. Harvest from 4-6 weeks.

Coriander flowers!!! And to think people tell us to pull out our coriander when it ‘bolts’

Calendula

Calendula is like original flavoured Pringles. Like… it’s not a show stopper, I’m not going to go out and rave about it (as I would about salt and vinegar Pringles), but I haven’t grown any in our garden for a couple of years and it turns out I really kind of…miss it.

Calendula is easy. It’s easy to grow from directly sown seeds, it’s easy to grow over the cooler months, it flowers when not much else is in bloom, the seeds are easy to save and sow again and the flowers are edible and a happy burst of sunshine yellow on cold days.

I was just listening to Escape (that Piña Colada song that they really should have just renamed ‘If you like piña coladas’ once it got famous because almost no one remembers it’s actually called Escape and I noticed Spotify has had to add ‘the Piña Colada Song’ in parentheses next to the title so it appears in everyone’s search results which is lame in a way I find hard to explicate).

Anyway.

I was listening to the song. And you know what its about - the harrowing tale of a couple who both decide to cheat on each other but it turns out by a by a hilarious comedy of errors that they’ve been replying to each other’s personal ads the whole time. But it’s set to a boppy tune and there are ocean noises playing in the background and besides, personal ads in a physical print newspaper are so retro and quaint that everyone ignores how depressing the story actually is and, after all, they both attempted cheated in the same way at the same time so I guess it’s even stevens???

God I am getting sidetracked today!

The point (that I am really struggling to arrive at) is that sometimes even the best relationships grow a bit stale and lose their spark, but often all you need is a little break to see each other in a new light and you’ll get your ‘makin’ love at midnight’ mojo back. I overused calendula, I got bored with it. I took it for granted, it fizzled out of my garden. And now I miss it and am going to fill my winter beds with it! And so should you.

Hey little broad bean baby!

Broad beans

Broad beans are one of those veggies that appear in supermarkets for only the briefest window of time (less than 10 weeks a year!), giving them an almost mythical quality, like a rarely sighted sea monster.