GC writes
Questions:

1. I live in central Scotland, I would like to grow peppers, chillies,
cucumber, potatoes, asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes, garlic. That's what
I would like, could someone comment on which of these vegetables I can
realistically grow in containers, in Scotland?

Not asparagus. It needs a huge root system to keep producing fat stems
which never get as far as making food for the plant because you chop
them off to eat. Realistically, you are looking at a dozen plants spaced
2 ft apart in the garden - replicating this in containers is not
practical.

Chillies are easy and fun.

Should some of these (chillies/tomatoes) be grown on windowsills? I
have seen seeds for most of these in the local garden centre, but I'm
not taking that as gospel.

Very wise

What size of container would you recommend and should it be one
container per type of vegetable?

Not necessarily. Suspect most of those would be best one to a container,
but I used to grow purple leaved french beans underplanted with lime
green lettuces, getting good crops of both as well as an attractive
planting.

I grow chillies in 6inch pots (these are small fruited ones) but most of
the rest would need much bigger containers.

3. Are the quality of seeds sold at garden centres acceptable or is it
better to buy mail order (or other?)? Could anyone recommend a source?

Mail order (or web) will often give you better choice - the GS may not
stock the entire range of a supplier.

4. This is probably a completely stupid question, if I buy the seeds to
start the plants off is it feasible to gather seeds that they produce
later in the year and store them somewhere to use again the following
year? I say a stupid question because I assume the answer is of course
I can - but are there particular storage considerations?

There's two considerations. Storage is one, the other is that seeds
don't necessarily come true (just as yo wouldn't expect all of your own
children to be identical)

In practice, you will find that there are more seeds in the packet than
you can use, so you will only need to buy every 2nd or 3rd year. I store
my seeds in a plastic box in the bottom of the fridge.

5. If I buy a pack of seeds, can I sow them directly into the intended
containers or do they need to be sown into a small tray and then
transplanted at some other date?

Easy to sow into small individual pots (yogurt pots will do) and
transfer the strongest plants - you'll only need half a dozen tomato
plants, for example. (Potatoes are grown from small potatoes - from GC
- not from seed)
Lettuce plants are too fiddly to transplant, so sow them where you want
to grow them, thin them out and eat the thinnings, and let what's left
grow into full sized lettuces.


7. It is now mid-late April, could someone recommend some varieties of
the above crops that I could realistically sow now to give me a project
and some experience this year?

April - May is planting time for most outside veg. Chillis, tomatoes,
peppers you might be better buying plants because the growing season in
scotland is not as long as in the south.


--
Kay