Not sure which forum to ask this question on, but I'll try here first. Texans are a wealth of information!
I harvested some bluebonnet seeds this year and would like to plant them in a field on our property in Blanco. I know they do better if scarified and am wondering what would be a good method of doing that given that I will have a lot of seeds. I thought about popping them in a food processor for a few pulses, but that might be overkill.
Any suggestions?
Tonya
Scarifying Bluebonnet Seeds
Tonya, here are a few methods of scarifying seeds from the wildflower center.
http://www.wildflower.org/howto/show.php?id=34&frontpage=true
Thanks Josephine, I'll read up on that.
I have 2 bluebonnet seedlings in one of my flowerbeds from seeds I threw out late fall last year!
Yes, bluebonnet germination can be very erratic and also very disappointing.
I have decided after many tries that I don't have the right conditions for them and finally quit trying, but I do love them, they are such a treasure!!!
True to form, my mother-in-law brought some seeds home to New Orleans, planted them in her back bed and now has beautiful bluebonnets that come up every year! Her home is built on a former horse race track. I'm SURE that is why everything she plants grows well!
I had good luck with both the standard and the red bluebonnet seeds from the Wildseed Farm in Fredericksburg, but of course, those were already scarified. Those are the plants that I harvested seed from. I already have new babies coming up for next year. Really do like them. They bring back wonderful memories of when I used to take my three daughters out every spring and take pictures of them in the bluebonnets.
There is a very interesting paragraph toward the end of the wildflower centers link.
They said that if you are going to sow bluebonnets out in a field with no irrigation it is better not to scarify them, because if the seeds sprout and there is no rain coming they would most likely die, so better to let them sprout on their own when conditions are right for them.
I could be dead of old age by then "better to let them sprout on their own when conditions are right for them."
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. If you just have to have bluebonnets (or others adapted to erratic conditions) this year, best to buy small plants and transplant. The seeds really do know what's best for them.
The current long range forecast is dry dry dry through the winter and spring. If that comes to pass, it probably won't be a great wildflower show. (In contrast to the forecast this time last year, wet wet, which paid off with awesome wildflower germination.)
The seeds I get are already scarified and I buy them in bulk from the Wildseed Farm. I sow them as seedballs so I have a pretty good germination rate, but if they weren't already scarified I wouldn't have the patience.
Don't know if you know any reloaders if so maybe you could get them to tumble the seeds in a brass tumbler this is what I use on seeds that need to be crarified.I use walnut shell media for the cleaning compound..
Lisa, how do you make seedballs?
Josephine - I saw that section about not scarifiying, as well. Because of that, I thought I would do some scarified and some not. I will definately not be watering these!
grits - enlighten me, what is a reloader? Sounds like something to do with guns...
realbirdlady - I had some extras pop up in my flower beds this spring (where I didn't really want them) even some in my grass. I just might move those to a better location, if it happens again!
Thanks to everybody for your continued input.
Tonya
Late last spring I bought 4 4" pots fr lowe's(deliberately not capitalized name)!!!!
Have kept water the pots were they were all summer. I now have new BB babies! I don't understand it but then again, I don't understand Mother Nature!!!
Got 3 or 4 pkts of Wildseed Farms seeds @ TNLA & Nitro-Phos Expos!! Going to rake my sandy soil (on top of a hill, above a lake, go figure!!!) Going to rake & pitch & see what happens next spring!!!
Smockette-What don't you understand?
Stephanie-Seedballs are a mixture of seeds, compost and clay. Formed into balls and dried in the sun. Then you just toss them and the seeds are protected from the elements and critters. The clay holds moisture to help the seeds germinate. Its an ancient way of sowing seeds, that is pretty much fool proof as long as there is adequate water once germination has occurred. I just toss them the balls will stay together protecting the seeds until rain comes along. Needless to say, with all the rain last year, the seedballs worked beautifully and the wildflowers were fantastic. Last spring I was having a really crazy day and a lady called me just to tell me she had CA poppies all over her yard. It made my day.
1lisac, I don't understand that I have baby BB!!! Always thought they were annuals but they have a disinctive leaf pattern, right? & I think have little ones fr those pots!!!
What county do you live in?
:~)
I live in Williamson County. They are annuals but the seeds for all Wildflowers should be sown in the fall/winter for blooms in spring. In your case I guess the seeds were sown over the summer .
Yeah, they pretty much sow themselves when they're done blooming in the spring, and managed to survive all those years without any help from us (although their odds go way up if some helpful human harvests the seed and makes sure it gets into the dirt).
The seeds are also perfectly willing to wait a couple of years before germinating, so your new babies might actually be the slower siblings of the plants you bought last spring, biding their time in the potting soil from the nursery.
The seeds are hard little things, so sometimes one will manage to get itself far away from its mother plant - caught up in an animals coat, stuck in the mud in a tire tread, etc. It is nice that they have such a distinctive little plant, so we easily know they're not weeds, no matter where they appear.
I had a 7.5 ac landscaping job in May. I went to the Indy 500 & came home to a nursery shutdown/closing & bought $2500 plants that I, with the help of friends, am having to water now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! B./c they backed out until next Spring!!!
Now, I have all these plants to water & I am stuck b/c I have to be with my folks in N Tx when I live in S Tx!!!!!
It is all good!!!
Right????
:~)
nbgard yes a reloader does have to do with guns but a rock tumbler works exactly the same way..We shooters use the tumblers to clean our brass cases ..Don't want to be using dirty cases you know...
Smockette-I also have a couple of baby bluebonnet seedlings coming up and I sowed my seeds LAST fall and had zero BB this past spring. Oh well! If I can keep from killing them while I'm moving stuff around in that bed and planting all the stuff from Arlington, I'll have at least 2 BB in the spring. LOL
Smock-I'm laughing at your situation. I'm envious of your landscaping job but that is a lot of work to keep the plants going until next spring and having to be one place when you live somewhere else is crazy.
I travel a lot and my kids and I were on a cruise this summer and somebody ask where we were from I blurted out CA., my kids looked at me bewildered and said "no we're not we're from TX". lol Last year was in 4 times zones in 1 month, with the kids, I got to the point I didn't know what state I was in much less what time zone. It embarasses my kids but I'm too old to care.
I have a friend that uses something involved in processing pecans to scarify seeds. I can ask her if you want me to.
As a side note BB seedlings should be coming up now but I have sowed the seeds through the end of Dec. and still had spring blooms. They are very hardy. So the ones that are coming up now should bloom in the spring.
What a rocking thread! I love it!
Thanks for continuing good info. The wildflower website that Josephine told about mentioned a couple of methods using freezing and soaking in water. That sounds pretty easy so I think I'll try that with half and sow unscarified the other half.
But keep the good info and stuff coming... I'm enjoying it all.
nb-please let us know the results of each method.
Hmm, that might be tough as I expect to scatter them out together. So I wouldn't really know which method worked! I'm just trying to cover my bases and hope that some will grow.
How about just scatter most of them, but do a little test patch with each approach?
Here's one of the seedlings from seeds I tossed out last fall. I have no idea if they were scarified or not. LOL
realbirdlady, that's an idea...