Top 10 Plant Seeds: Our Current Best Sellers

Most people read a top 10 as "the ten easiest" or "the ten we rate highest". It isn't either. This list is ranked by what actually sells, so a pack can sit here because it's a talking point rather than because it's forgiving. Carolina Reaper Seeds are a good example: brilliant sellers, and by our own description too hot for normal culinary use.

Your Baskets Wrote This Chart, Not Our Copywriters

The plant shop covers a lot of ground, and this bestseller list is the quickest map of it. There's a cactus seed mix, a berry, three chillies, a tomato, a salad microgreen, an ornamental flower, a culinary herb and wormwood, all in ten packs. Membership rotates, so if something here catches your eye, the branch it came from will always have neighbours worth a look: chilli seeds, tomato seeds, herb seeds, flower seeds, cactus seeds, microgreens and berry seeds all sit under plant seeds.

The Chilli Heat Ladder, From Habanero To Reaper

Three of the ten are chillies, and they're not interchangeable. Habanero Mixture Seeds give red, orange and green fruits (sometimes other colours), sitting from around 100,000 up to roughly 350,000 SHU, with a rich Scotch Bonnet style flavour that works in salsa. Dorset Naga Black Seeds were bred in Dorset and can hit 800,000 SHU, taking about 165 days before the fruits go red, wrinkled and 4 to 5cm long on a plant near 65cm tall. Carolina Reaper Seeds are a Naga crossed with a Habanero Red at 2.2 million SHU, ready roughly 100 to 120 days after germination. Watch out for pepper burn: gloves for all three, and gloves plus a mask and goggles for the Reaper, because you won't feel it on your fingers until you rub your eyes.

Slower Burns and Softer Landings

Cacti Mix (Ferocactus wislizeni) Seeds are the patience test of the ten. Soak them for a day, sprinkle over the soil and press them in gently, keep it moist and warm, and add sterilised perlite to the mix. Germination is slow, so don't panic at week three. Japanese Flower Carpet Seeds are the opposite temperament: sow in April into beds or rows, keep them watered and sunny, and you get summer colour with very little fuss. Basil 'Dark Opal' (Ocimum basilicum) Seeds bring near-black purple leaves to a windowsill pot, though if you wanted plain green for pesto duty, Sweet Basil is the one to get instead. Alpine Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) Seeds are the classic red version, and the pale, almost buttery Alpine Strawberry Yellow Cream comes from the same plant. Cocktail Tomato 'Thai Pink Egg' (Solanum lycopersicum) Seeds sit at the small-fruit end; Great White Beefsteak Tomato, grown by Thomas Jefferson, sits at the other. Microgreens Salad Mix (Lactuca sativa) Seeds are the fastest thing here, and Microgreens Exotic Salad Mix is the odder-leaved sibling if you want something stranger. Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) Seeds round it off, with Mugwort as the milder, hardier cousin that copes with acidic and slightly alkaline soil.

Warm Corners, Sowing Windows and What To Buy First

The chillies want heat above everything. Sow about 1cm deep straight into their final pots, cover with pierced cling film to hold humidity, and keep them between 25 and 30°C depending on the variety. Feed with a tomato feed, and a calcium foliar spray helps stop fruits rotting on the plant. Flowers follow the calendar instead: April for the Japanese Flower Carpet. Cacti and microgreens go in indoors whenever you fancy. If you're only buying one pack, we'd take Habanero Mixture Seeds over the Reaper for a first chilli year, because you get colours, usable heat and a harvest you'll actually cook with. Want something on a plate in weeks rather than months? Skip the chillies and start with the microgreens.