Niche 'Root Crop' selection product reviews

I want to start off by stating that by far the worst disasters that befell these crops were in no way the fault of the seeds, and are not an accurate reflection of their actual high quality.

You see, many of these seeds were lost, despite being planted as per the very clear instructions printed on the packet. You see, just as the sprouting seedling were getting a good foothold, some unseasonally heavy rains came along and flooded out the raised garden bed, taking all the topsoil, and seedling, with it. This resulted in a mad dash to a nearby garden centre to replace the seeds, but alas, the optimum planting window had been passed, so this resulted in some rather heat-struck veges.

Because of the late planting, the rainbow assortment of carrots, close on 200 seeds, generated a mere dozen successful sprouts which still managed to mature into healthy carrots in short order. They were colourful indeed, tasty and sweet, and were great when ravaged by the potato peeler and the resulting mess of slices added to the bumper lettuce crop, and used to make a visually stunning salad to celebrate the first cropping from our new garden. Shame there weren't more of them...

However, in a surprise showing, a huge stack of the beetroot seeds I thought dead for sure instead responded really well, and are well on their way to producing enough beetroot to satisfy even my young son's unstoppable craving for the red gold. You see, the instructions say to soak the seeds overnight to rehydrate them before planting in seedling pots for sprouting. Once sprouted and leaves showing clearly, move them into their happy home in the garden. However, due to a shortage of seedling pots, I had at least half a packet of seeds soaking in water for nearly 2 weeks! Thinking them well-drowned 9since the water was quite disgusting by that stage) I simply dumped them along one edge of the garden and kicked a few handfuls of soil over them. Not only did they survive, they did better than the 'correctly treated' plants! Go to show, eh.

Overall, not too sure about these, but if the surviving crops are anything to go by, in better conditions when the "Murphy's Law Fairies" are locked up securely, you'll get a stunning crop out of every packet. My only real gripe is actually about the packet itself... because of the manner in which the packet of seeds are attached to the inside of the instruction folder, careless removal can damage and even destroy the packing, making it awfully hard to read instructions! So just take care.