All Seeds: Kitchen Garden, Botanical and Cacti Varieties

A tomato seed and a peyote seed want almost nothing in common. One germinates in a week on a warm sill and is finished by autumn. The other takes years and would rot in the same compost. Both are on this page, along with the rest of our full botanical and ethnobotanical range, so here is what each part of it actually asks of you.

Cacti and mescaline seeds

Cactus seed is tiny and slow, and that puts most people off before they start. It should not. The technique is the same for all of them: a peat-based cactus compost, very high humidity until the seed splits, then ventilation before mould gets there first.

San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi)

The forgiving one, and the one we would start with. It germinates readily in a humid propagator and is the fastest grower of the mescaline cacti we stock. Peruvian Torch, Bolivian Torch and Trichocereus macrogonus sit beside it on the cactus seed shelf, and the Prickly Pack gathers all five at 20 seeds apiece with cactus nutrients included.

Peyote (Lophophora williamsii)

Slower again, and worth being honest about: this is a multi-year plant, not a season. Aztekium ritteri is slower still and tops out around five centimetres, throwing small pink and white flowers through summer. Both propagate best from seed, which is the whole reason they are here rather than as plants.

Poppy, botanical and legume seeds

Papaver somniferum and Eschscholzia californica are the two poppies, and they are not interchangeable. The first is the opium poppy, a hardy annual whose seed carries no alkaloids at all. The second, the California poppy, is grown for the colour: blue-green foliage, orange and red flowers that close at night. Mucuna pruriens is the velvet bean, a fast tropical legume whose pods are covered in fine hairs that itch, so wear gloves at harvest. Ephedra viridis, Green Mormon Tea, is the desert shrub of the group. More of the same shelf sits under psychoactive plant seeds and exotic seeds.

How to choose and germinate your seeds

Match the packet to the time you have. Some hard-coated seed comes up better after a spell in the fridge, a trick growers call stratification, while the cacti want warmth and damp instead. Nothing here needs special kit beyond a propagator lid or a freezer bag.

Everything on this page goes out in plain packaging with quick UK delivery, and the packets keep well in a cool dry drawer if you sow half now and half next year. If you want the whole edible end of the range rather than the rare stuff, that shelf is the shorter walk.