Top 10 Plant Seeds: The Plantshop Bestsellers

If you've ever stood in front of a seed rack with no idea which pack is worth your one warm windowsill, this is the shortcut. The ten packs here are the plantshop's best sellers, ordered by what leaves our shelves rather than by what we feel like pushing.

Ranked By Orders, Not By Us

No editor picks. A pack shows up here because loads of people bought it, and it drops off when something outsells it. So treat today's ten as a snapshot: useful if you're new to the plant seeds side of the growshop and don't fancy scrolling the whole hub, but never a permanent line-up. For the full spread of chilli, veg, herb, flower and cactus seeds, start at the plant seeds hub.

Superhot Pods, Purple Basil And A Cactus Mix

The spread is the point. Ten packs, and between them they cover nearly every corner of the plantshop.

The Chilli Corner: Reaper, Naga, Habanero

Three of the ten are chillies, which is why plenty of people land here looking for a pepper shop. Carolina Reaper Seeds give the world's hottest chilli at 2.2 million Scoville, bell-shaped with a little tail on the bottom. Dorset Naga Black Seeds reach around 800,000 SHU and ripen into wrinkled red pods 4 to 5cm long on a plant of about 65cm. Habanero Mixture Seeds sit lower, roughly 100,000 to 350,000 SHU, with red, orange and green fruit that all ripen around the same time. Watch out for the seeds themselves: superhots germinate slowly, sometimes several weeks, and handling them without gloves catches up with you hours later when you rub an eye.

Fruit, Leaves, Flowers And Something Spiky

Alpine Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) Seeds give the classic small red berry, and the same plant also comes as Alpine Strawberry - Yellow Cream if you'd rather have pale, almost buttery fruit. Cocktail Tomato 'Thai Pink Egg' (Solanum lycopersicum) Seeds sit at the small-fruit end of the tomato shelf; Great White Beefsteak Tomato is the opposite, big pale fruit with a Monticello pedigree, grown by Thomas Jefferson himself. Microgreens Salad Mix (Lactuca sativa) Seeds is the quickest thing here to eat, while Microgreens Exotic Salad Mix is the stranger-leaved version, cut at 2 to 3 weeks once the first true leaves show. Basil 'Dark Opal' (Ocimum basilicum) Seeds come up deep purple, so go back to Sweet Basil if you want the plain green original. Japanese Flower Carpet Seeds, Cacti Mix (Ferocactus wislizeni) Seeds and Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) Seeds fill out the rest of the wider plant seed range, and Mugwort is the milder, hardier cousin of that wormwood, happy on acidic and slightly alkaline soil.

What To Sow Indoors, What Goes Straight Outside

Anything that wants heat starts inside. Chilli seeds go about 1cm deep into their final pot, covered with perforated cling film to hold the humidity, kept moist and warm at roughly 25 to 30°C depending on the variety. Cacti Mix takes a soak of about a day first, then sprinkle the seeds over the soil, press them in gently, keep them moist in a warm spot, and mix in sterilised perlite; germination is slow, so don't bin the pot after a fortnight. Japanese Flower Carpet is the outdoor one: sow in April, water it, give it sun, and it looks after itself until summer colour arrives. Want something to eat in your first month? Sow the Microgreens Salad Mix while the Carolina Reaper is still thinking about it, and pick up trays and pots in the rest of the growshop before the seeds land.