Suitable for...
Many vegetables, annuals, biennials and herbaceous plants can be grown from seed outdoors. Ornamental examples include Centaurea cyanus (cornflower), Digitalis (foxglove), Eschscholzia (Californian poppies), Helianthus annuus (sunflower), Iberis umbellata (candytuft), Limnanthes douglasii (poached egg flower) and Tropaeolum majus (nasturtiums). Vegetables such as beans, carrots, onions and peas can also be grown outside from seed.
Sowing seed outdoors, directly into final growing places, is ideal for gardeners who do not have much room to raise seed indoors in trays or propagators. You also don’t need to start seed sowing as early in spring as when you sow outdoors. You can scatter seed of ornamentals in free drifts to achieve a natural-looking distribution, or sow vegetables and cutting flowers in clearly defined drills to make weeding and thinning easier to carry out.