Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Top 10 annuals and perennials, 1 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
Hi Samantha! I will try to remember from a year ago .......

I did use compost and good potting soil. They are in 5 gallon decor plastic pots with good drainage. I grow mine in shade except for morning sun of about 2 hours. I have had great success with the "Jewel Mix" of seeds that I just bought at Wally World last year. I did try to grow some other variety and have not had any success with them as of yet. I fertilize with Osmocote and water maybe once a week. (They don't like a lot of water when growing in the shade.) I didn't do any soaking or pre-germination. I just lightly buried them in the potting soil. Watered them every day until they sprouted. Not too much water, just to dampen the soil. I don't remember how long it took them to germinate, but I believe it was fairly quick like a week or two. I planted about 10 seeds in each container. Most sprouted and grew quite nicely. And the 3 pots of Nasturtiums have been growing so much that I have had to cut the vines back twice in the past year. They bloom constantly even in the shade. I don't know what the secret is. But I do think that morning sun, and then bright shade the rest of the day is what is working for me. I had them in full sun and they didn't look too good, so I moved them to the shade location and found success. Being in the shade, the leaves stay a nice green instead of the faded green/yellow they were in full sun. I think that the Florida heat was just too much for them to be in full sun all day.

One thing...... they do NOT like to be transplanted. I tried digging up and moving a couple plants and they died. So I don't think I would pre-germinate them. Just plant the seeds in the ground or a container where you plan to keep them. I may add some compost to the top of the soil this year, but other than that I don't plan to mess with them at all. Just ignore them once they start growing! They seem to like that best of all! (MY kinda plant!) LOL Good Luck!

This is how mine look a year later after being pruned back to the ground just below the container. They were out from the container about 3 feet. But they were getting trampled on!

Stephanie - If you would like some seeds from mine, d-mail me.

This message was edited Apr 22, 2007 10:54 PM