In an unprecedented year, the horticultural world has seen an explosion of interest in growing your own produce from seed. With so many of us having been impassioned to grow our own in the lockdown period it comes as no surprise there has been a huge increase with demand in allotments soaring and the desire for garden space jumping up on the wish lists for many house movers in recent months and this trend looks like it’s here to stay!
With so many of us having taken solace in our gardens and allotments, Dobies have introduced exciting new seeds for 2021 that reflects these current trends. Supporting all those new to growing your own with well thought out and easy to grow seed as well as presenting standout varieties sure to excite and satisfy the expectations of Dobies more experienced gardeners. Dobies’ new seed varieties deliver just what’s required to continue to inspire all the nation’s gardeners, with new additions throughout flower and vegetable seed ranges whilst continuing to build on their competitively priced, ‘no frills’ ethos.
Introducing a fabulous selection of greens and herbs to keep you growing and cooking all year with varieties that can be cropped small or left to grow to provide a multitude of culinary uses.
You will find all you need from those which are quick to crop to those producing a longer crop. There are new varieties which can only be described as ‘Well Behaved’ which feature attributes to make them easier to harvest or weather resistant making them perfect for UK growing – and you’ll also find the latest in commercial breeding here too.
There’s a fabulous new addition to our crimson family as Dobies introduces the first fully blight resistant plum tomato. It has many culinary uses but is the ultimate tomato for making perfect delicious sauces.
Plus, additions to the flower seed range see a wonderful selection of perennials and annuals to deliver colour, interest and scent for both garden and home whist keeping wildlife happy too! From traditional favourites to budget bedding with four new striking marigolds – it’s all here to keep flower beds and borders, pots and baskets spilling over with long-lasting blooms.
The Rob Smith Range introduces a wonderful selection of heritage varieties. Two heavy cropping and flavour packed tomatoes come highly rated, beautifully coloured lettuces that will uplift your summer salads and a smoking hot chilli for the brave! Plus tempting new flower seed for a garden look like no other and a nasturtium with all the answers!
Dobies’ new seed is a perfect antidote as we move forward into the new season and is sure to capture the imagination of all who love their garden.
The Dobies NEW Seed Catalogue will be available from the beginning of October and, in the meantime, you can find all the new seed listed below on our website.
The new seed range speaks for itself, so without further ado, Dobies is proud to present the New seed range for 2021!
New Seed Varieties for 2021 – Vegetables
For over 125 years, Dobies have used their vast knowledge and experience to bring a range of outstanding new varieties to gardeners. Our new 2021 vegetable range is no exception. This year 22 new cultivars having been added to the collection to keep your allotments, veg patches and containers well stocked.
Broccoli – Purple Rain F1
This compact, productive broccoli, flowers through summer into autumn before ‘purple sprouting’ and is ideal for exposed sites. Harvest the main head like broccoli or leave and let it split into spears – just like purple sprouting.
Cauliflower – Zaragoza
A summer/autumn cauliflower, produces top quality curds whose disease resistance kicks ‘club root’ into touch. It stands well for weeks without ‘blowing’ and deserves a space on your plot.
Tomato – Crimson Plum F1
The first fully blight resistant plum tomato produces masses of fruit with a deep rich flavour. The moist meaty flesh makes it perfect for cooking or pureed into delicious home-made sauce.
Pak Choi – Macau
This mini Pak Choi is superb for stir-frying whole. Performing well from mid-summer and with good ‘bolting’ tolerance; successional sowing is the gateway to months of stir fries.
Basil – Everleaf Emerald
This upright, ornamental Basil, crops up to three months longer than regular ‘Genovese’. Dark in colour and full of flavour, it makes the perfect garnish for mozzarella and tomato salad.
Pea – Sabrina
With excellent resistance to downy and powdery mildew, this sweet tasting pea provides non-stop cropping through cool spring and mid-summer heat. Sow from March to June and enjoy its flavour all summer long.
Pea – Sugar Lace
This sweet, string less ‘Sugar Snap’ with thick, succulent pods is ideal for sowing in pots. Resistant to powdery mildew and almost self-supporting, it is the perfect pea eaten raw or cooked. Try popping some pods into a school day packed lunch.
Broccoli – Gemini F1
A super-speedy broccoli takes just 80 days from sowing to harvest. Cut the tender head, then the side-shoots and eat them steamed then served with butter or raw and crunchy, with dips.
Pepper Chilli – Chocolate Habanero
Brings you the authentic flavour of Jamaica in one rich, smoky chilli. Ripening from green to chocolate brown, it is the perfect addition to Jerk sauce and one of the hottest Habaneros around.
Brussels Sprout – Gladius F1
An upright, Brussels sprout reaching just 75cm tall. Easy to ‘de-leaf’, so a doddle to harvest, the mild flavoured buttons are delicious when cooked traditionally or roasted with olive oil.
Carrot – CascadeF1
An early cropping, uniform, stump rooted carrot, that’s slow to ‘bolt’ and holds well in the ground. This versatile veg can be sown densely for full flavoured mini carrots or thinned to be eaten full grown.
Shallot – Simiane
Harvest young, like spring onions or leave longer in the ground to mature. The clusters of pink fleshed, sweet, banana-shaped bulbs are easy to slice and are delicious in salads, sandwiches or soups.
Sweetcorn – IllusionF1
A vigorous sweet corn, that’s an excellent cropper in the UK climate. The tempting white cobs, up to 20cm long, are more tender than a ‘super sweet’ and have that same mouth-watering flavour.
Swiss Chard – Peppermint
With its pink to white two-tone stems adds an air of sophistication to vegetable plots, flower borders or upcycled designer containers. Steam the leaves like spinach or add the colourful mid ribs to salads.
Tomato – Veranda Red F1
A British bred, blight resistant, early ripening, outdoor tomato that’s ideal for hanging baskets or containers. The cherry sized fruit, which proved popular in taste tests, are sweet and full of flavour. It crops until the first frosts and even longer under cover.
Squash – Mashed Potatoes
A bushy, white skinned, ‘acorn’ squash, with excellent keeping qualities. When cooked and fluffed, the white flesh looks like mashed potato but contains only 23 calories per serving. That’s around ¼ the carbs of potatoes!
Kale – Oldenboer F1
The successful result of recent breeding, this is a compact, cold tolerant kale and with a long harvesting period. The tightly curled leaves suit any culinary style and thin mid-ribs mean more food and less wastage.
New – Rob Smith Range
Tomato – Bloody Butcher
A succulent, old German Heritage tomato, the size of a golf ball. If you fancy a heavy cropping glasshouse variety with succulent fruits, dark ‘blood-red’ juice and full of flavour, this is a ‘must’ buy for you.
Tomato – Big Brandy
This heavy cropper is the offspring of ‘Big Dwarf’ and ‘Brandywine’ – two highly rated Heritage varieties. Richly complex in flavour, whether fresh from the plant or cooked, this beautiful, large, pink beefsteak, is much earlier to mature than its parents.
Pepper Chilli – Carolina Reaper
Rated the hottest in the world by the Guinness Book of Records, it measures a cool 2.2million Scoville Heat Units. First comes the fruity, chocolate/cinnamon flavour, then the mind-blowing heat kicks in! Handle with care – always wear gloves when handling fruit and wash your hands before rubbing your eyes. This devilishly hot chilli will blow your socks off!
Lettuce – Speckled Trout
Attractive red ‘splashes’ on bright green leaves gave rise to the unusually named Austrian Heritage Cos. Cold tolerant and slow to ‘bolt’, it is ideal for early sowing and cooler climates and makes a sweet, colourful addition to a Caesar salad.
Lettuce – Bronze Beauty
This beautiful heritage variety boasts blushed bronze leaves, is super sweet and is slow to ‘bolt’. Winner of an All American Selection in 1947, it was described as ‘the finest, most colourful and most delicious leaf lettuce for the garden’ – qualities that are still irresistible.
NEW SEED VARIETIES 2021 – FLOWERS
Dobies of Devon have supplied flower seeds direct to gardeners since 1894. In keeping with their long-established reputation for only selecting the best, the 2021 catalogue contains a wonderful range of new and exciting varieties of cottage garden favourites, ‘must have’ annuals and the pick of perennials from seed.
Calendula – Bulls Eye
This unique ‘pom-pom’ flowered pot marigold boasts sunshine yellow blooms up to 6cm across with a contrasting ‘Bulls Eye’ centre. This Fleuroselect Novelty winner, which was highly commended by international judges in 2020, is perfect for containers or borders and very easy to grow.
Sweet Pea – Fire & Ice
Produces magical displays of beautifully shaded flowers in white, pink and purple, with a sweet lingering fragrance and lovely long stems that make them perfect for cutting. If you keep cutting; the blooms keep coming.
Sweet Pea – Fire & Ice
Produces magical displays of beautifully shaded flowers in white, pink and purple, with a sweet lingering fragrance and lovely long stems that make them perfect for cutting. If you keep cutting; the blooms keep coming.
Primrose – Amore
hat’s not to love about a stunning, tropical peach melba, double flowered, lightly scented primrose, that brings a carnival of colours to late winter and early spring? Great for adding a touch of class to borders, baskets or containers, this perennial beauty has it all.
Cosmos – Fizzy Purple
This super selection brings you a rare colour in cosmos whose ‘fizzy’ flowers, create an effervescent look. Beautiful in a vase and adored by bees, they will keep you ‘buzzing’ all summer long.
Zinnia – Dobies Florist Pastels
Add ‘zing’ to containers or the middle of a border and are valued by flora artists for their fabulous colours and their single, semi-double or double multi-featured blooms.
African Marigold – Cupid Lemon
Boasting blooms of eye-catching bright lemon flowers made up of tightly quilled petals – just like chrysanthemums! Excellent for bedding, with blue ageratum, they add a welcome burst of colour, for gardeners ‘on a budget’.
Allium – Yellow Allium
This rare ‘Ornamental Onion’ forming clumps of globular, sunshine yellow blooms, is ideal for the front of a border or rock garden. Much loved by bees and butterflies and great as cut flowers, these tough plants from Tibet are temperature tolerant down to -20C.
Silene – Carmine
With an unusual cascading habit, is ideal baskets and containers. Sow in autumn or spring for an early summer display of small, semi-double carmine coloured flowers, that flower for six months. No deadheading required!
Coreopsis – Amulet
Just 25cm tall, easy to grow and ideal for pots or edging a border. Hardy and heat tolerant, masses of dainty burnt red blooms, top fine feathery foliage – it just keeps on flowering, all summer long.
African Marigold – Cupid Orange
Each individual bloom looks like a mini-tangerine chrysanthemum on a luxurious cushion of green. Easy to grow and ideal as ‘budget bedding’, the densely packed foliage means few weeds, especially when planted en masse.
French Marigold – Tiger Eyes
Flaunts sophisticated double flowers with an orange crest, graduating to maroon around the collar. Dwarf, bushy and easy to grow, they are ideal for anyone looking for a ‘steal’ with antique style.
French Marigold – Spanish Brocade
Free flowering and easy to grow, the flamboyant, double, red and gold bi-coloured blooms, look as if the edges have been dipped in gold. Inspired by flamenco, these glorious flowers, will have you clapping your hands and stamping your feet.
Lavender – Lady
This first-year flowering perennial fills a garden with beautiful blooms and classic fragrance, year after year. Unlike many other varieties it doesn’t split or sprawl. Much loved by pollinators, the flowers can be added to sugar and biscuits or turned into traditional lavender bags.
New Seed Varieties – Rob Smith Range
Nasturtium – Baby Orange
A breakthrough in nasturtium breeding produces a neat ball-like habit, which is covered in flowers. Small, dark green leaves and contrasting tangerine flowers make them perfect for pots or the corners of vegetable beds. Its flowers and leaves make a colourful addition to salads.
Rudbeckia – Sahara
Huge flowers up to 13cm wide packed onto plants only 60cm tall hit you with exciting vintage shades of copper, amber, gold and burnt rose. It’s a garden ‘look’ like no other! Flowering from late summer until late autumn, they add ‘pizzazz’ when many start flagging and others are well past their best.
Allium cernuum
This beautiful, clump-forming perennial is widely admired for its elegant chandeliers of flowers in baby pink and white – and despite its glamour, it is easy to grow. The leaves and flowers taste like chives and are perfect in salads – but would you dare to eat such beautiful blooms?
Cosmos – Pink Popsocks
Baby pink blooms and ‘powder puff’ centres have borrowed their ‘look’ from anemone-flowered dahlias. Around 60cm tall, loved by bees and glorious as cut flowers, they are a ‘must have’ for the garden from June-September.
An additional 9 new varieties have been added in our organic veg seed range too.
Squash & Pumpkin Jack Be Little
To view our whole range of new flower seeds click the button below.
Good morning
We recently had a delivery of 20 06 74 Perennial Collection-Bare root.
Could you please advise us how to store these until it is time to and when to plant them.
Best regards
John Sadler
Good morning John, here are some instructions for the bare root perennials.
Upon receipt plant without delay providing soil and weather conditions are favourable. Should this not be possible they can be kept for a short while in a light cool frost free place having first removed from the postal packaging but retaining the polythene.
If poor weather conditions persist plant in pots using peat-free compost and stand in a sheltered spot or in a cold greenhouse or cold frame before planting outdoors after hardening off in the early spring.
We hope this is helpful to you,
Best regards,
The Dobies Team