At the start of the summer, M&S did a scheme called Little Garden. When you spent £20 you were given a seedling kit, including a pot, soil, and seeds. We got three packs: pansy, viola, and beetroot.

This little video from M&S explains the scheme.

First, you had to put the soil onto a surface, when you then put water onto it expanded into more. You then put most of it, but not all of it, into the pot, making sure it was about there was about an eighth of room left so that you could put the seeds in. You then placed the seed mat onto the soil, making sure it’s spread out evenly, afterwards you push the remaining soil into the pot. Covering the mat.

Afterwards you separate out a little marker sign from the packaging, to tell you which pot has which seed, place the sign in the pot and add a bit of water.

You place the pots in on the windowsill to let them get sun and every day you water it a little whenever you see the pot get dry, about two times, morning and evening.

Once some shoots sprout and are well established you move then into bigger pots and plant them outdoors. We split our packs into six pots. The beetroot didn’t seem to be growing but we decided to plant it outside and see what happened. Here’s where we are now. One of the pots seems to have died. But five are now showing shoots, some quite bit. There seem to be little shoots from the beetroot now so maybe that will grow as well.

Update 28th July:

The Pansy’s have both come through and flowered now. Pretty cool!