When I started flower gardening in 2005 I really didn't know how. We tilled the area, amended the soil and I just broadcast seed everywhere. Only way to go. This year I did the "thing". Bought the seed starter trays, bought the little seed starter balls that swell when you add water. Carefully,
followed all the directions.....even bought a mini GH and put it in the kitchen so I could watch them. Positioned it right under the Solatube Skylight so they would get just the right light. Everything little seed germinated. I watched and pulled the extras so the others could get a good start. Potted them when they were big enough. Watched for the two leaves.....well, you get the picture. Maybe 10% made it to the flowerbed and 10% of those lived. However, in despair in took the old road and broadcast seed everywhere. Success at last!
I am getting sick of planting these little Ws seedlings!
I like to broadcast a lot of seed too. Some of the best flowers I have are from broadcasting seed. I buy bulk seed so I at least get something.
When you 'just broadcast',...do you prepare the bed, broadcast the seeds, lightly rake over it, and keep it watered? I think I'll try that in one bed. Beats planting things one by one, and probably looks more cottagey. : )
~Lucy
Well, I haven't tilled since 2005 because many of the seed I used then were perennials and they keep reseeding and coming back stronger and stronger. I do add mulch in the late fall when I am cleaning up the remains of the summer. In the Spring it is so exciting to check every inch of soil every day to see what is coming up and just what it may be. I usually kind of lightly rake the ground with a leaf rake to stir it up a bit being careful of the areas where I know there are returns. Sprinkle a little when the ground is dry so the seeds have enough moisture. This year the rain has moved somethings around but that is ok because they were not in a particular place anyway. Can't deny that I pick up something here and there from HD and a few of my favorite local nurseries. Try real hard to stay with native and perennial. Somethings are just to beautiful to stick to a plan. Tried to send picture but it is not working today.
I prepared the bed the first year, broadcast seed and watered. This is my third year and I have one section I that is just for this type of garden. I weed then water like crazy in the spring. The only problem is that I can spread hundreds of seeds of one type and only get one or no plants. So it takes a LOT of seed. One of my favorite this year is siberian wallflower.
I planted about 80 larkspur today - still have TONS of seedlings. Made the mistake of going to the farmer's market this morning and saw what can be accomplished with a green house. Oh, well, my gardens will look great in July - and you can't beat the price of w.s. :-)
LouC... Would love to see pictures, when you can get it to work. : )
~Lucy
These are from last June, 2006. Anemone from seed. Didn't even know what they were when I planted the seed. The plants have come back and are loaded with buds but no blooms as yet.
Again from Last June, 2006. Some are repeats that came back from the seed of 2005. This year has been so cool and wet that everything is at least a month behind.
LouC, those anemones are just gorgeous!! Tamara
The hollyhocks along the side got really big and beautiful later. I planted a package of mixed seed and couldn't believe the beauty. Some of them are white, pink, dark pink, pale pink, doubles....just everything from one little packet of seed. Of course they reseed like crazy. The ones that have bloomed this year have a terrible rust fungus. The constant rain has made the blooms die off much earlier and they are sort of slimey. Just leaving them alone until it stops raining and will see what happens next.
The ballon flowers are also from seed in 2005. The picture is 2006. This year they are 3' tall and just now putting out buds. Again, the strange weather we are having. They have bloomed all up and down the stem before. We are all always in a wait and see game to help our plants do their very best. Isn't is fun?
I potted the asparagus fern this year because it became so big last year that it just about covered everything for 3' around it.
Can't seem to give up on the poppies even though they don't do the best for me. Planted again this year and the rain has about beat them to death. As always....seed.
Oh...LouC, Your flowers are beautiful. : )
That does it, I'm gonna throw out some seeds, and see what pops up.
It has been so dry here. My DH must have felt sorry for me having to spend hours and hours hand watering everything, every day...so today he brought home a huge roll of tubing and microjets from his orange grove, and started rolling it out around the flower beds. I still have alot of beds to do,.....but it going pretty fast.
Needless to say...... I'm very very happy, and so are the flowers. : )
~Lucy
Sounds like Mutiny on the Bounty here - rofl. I'm in the same boat - so many ws seedlings and so little time. But I detect an underlying joy here in everyone's successes, so at the risk of being "tarred and feathered", would anyone happen to have 10 packs worth of extra seed for Anita's swap going on now? - http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/726788/
ducking from rotten tomatoes -
karen
I winter sowed using the baggie method. I then just planted the whole clumps of seedlings in the same hole. They did not do much last spring but look what I got this spring. I need to thin them and move the taller ones to the back. When is a safe time to do this?
Tortoise,
Since tops of plants need to be cut back this time of year when transplanting in order to balance the trauma to the roots, I would let the early bloomers finish blooming before digging them up.
Also, because of the summer heat, you're going to need lots of water, and you don't want the roots waving around longer in the air longer than they have to. So, I would have the area prepared where they are going to first with roomy holes, then as you pull the plants apart and cut them back, put them immediately in their new holes which you then fill with water and allow to drain before backfilling.
It's a good idea to keep the crown (where the top of thte plant meets the bottom) at the same level of ground it was at before.
Perennial poppies transplant best when they are dormant in August.
I would follow the same procedure with later blooming plants - some transplant very easily (like mums). But, if it's a tap-rooted plant like hollyhocks or platycodon, I would leave it alone until it goes dormant in the fall (especially Japanese anemone) or in late winter before it starts growing to move it.
If you tell me the names of the plants you're moving, I might be able to give you more specific advise.
Apologies for hijacking this thread - I have been so frustrated by not getting my ws plants into the ground in a timely manner - have been wondering if there's "life after wintersowing", so I really have enjoyed the commiserating going on here.
But, it was hard to resist teasing about Anita's seed swap in the ws forum - are y'all out of rotten tomatoes?
Re: broadcast seeding. Every year I get two or three packets to mix and scatter around in the empty places. This year I threw together some cosmos and jasmine-scented tobacco. I just broadcast them around, and go over the surface quick with a cultivator. Whatever will sprout can come up. I poked in some nice Pride of India nasturtiums to keep my Buddha company.
The neat thing is, sometimes something will take hold and claim its spot in a bed year after year. This year wallflowers and sweet william have decided they now have permanent spots. They join shasta daisies and alpine columbine. :)
It sounds prettier than it actually looks. They have to fill in. Next year should be great. :)
-Joe
I totally agree about the self-sowers, whether you start them by broadcast seed or planted plants. One of the prettiest things we used to have before it got too shady and permanent plants filled in on part of our hillside was a forest of larkspur.
Now, way at the back on the inside of a path through yew and tiarella, Siberian forgetmenots self-sow every year in very dry, dark shade. Nothing could be a more intense, solid sheet of blue. But when they go to seed, they are awful, but then that's what the inside of paths are for.
Other hop-arounders in the shade I wouldn't be without are foxgloves and viola labradorica. Kniola's Black morning glory is dependable, but might be considered TOO dependable - for partial shade.
Lychnis coronaria does the same thing in both sun & partial shade, and so does cleome. I've had the same experience as others have with columbine, sweet william and flowering tobacco.
When a plant decides for itself where it wants to be and the gardener concurs, that's when the garden looks as if it has always been where it is. Once these plants naturalize, you can go on to wintersowing something else - but if I were just beginning, I'd wintersow these first.
Naw, we aren't going to tar and feather you, Blue! I might do more Ws swaps, no problem, but I doubt I'll actually do the WS part again. (Don't rat on me if you see my name on the sign up ;) I just have better luck either starting them early under lights or direct sowing (as it turned out, the WS poppies didn't do much, but the seeds I threw out before a snowfall are going gangbusters. Buds, no flowers, but soon I'll have pics. I didn't have the heart to thin them and think I made a big mistake :(
The other things I had excellent luck with was mid July sowing of biennials like pansies and foxglove. I wish I had done wallflower, too. Those pansies lasted all wionter and the blooming plants are very large now....much larger than any purchased pansies from spring or even last fall. They are also going much stronger, even though the weather is hot. HOWEVER, they tale up a lot of real estate at the end of the summer I don't really have to devote to them..
Suzy
Whew & lol - my ws poppies are where yours are at - buds, no flowers, except for the ones still in their milk jugs. The coast is looking pretty clear to plant out the rest tomorrow - not ideal conditions or time of year, but I'll be thrilled with what I get.
Another thing I'm delighted with from wintersowing is the primroses - P. sieboldii (from http://www.nargs.org/ ) and P. japonica from Tammy here on DG germinated lots of seedlings - couldn't have done it any other way. They're teeny, all right, but I want them badly enough to wait a year or two to see flowers.
I am a total nincompoop with indoor sowing - just thinking about it brings awful memories of fungi taunting me with their fuzzy little cilia - wintersowing rescued me.
OMG! I got a package f primula seed from Weezingreens and have an entire flat of wall to wall seedlings. There must be 1000 there, but they are so tiny!
On the other hand, the ones I started inside are huge and have been blooming for a month. Primulas don't like our summer heat, so the WS babies will probably stop growing shortly and only come to life in the fall when the nights are cooler, so I'm not sure when to transplant. I need to make sure they get enough of a root system before winter and yet enough size in the fall to bloom next spring.
I'll take some pics tomorrow of both of them.
Suzy
My wintersown primrose seedlings also sound just like yours - very tiny - wall to wall in their ws milk jugs.
I really don't know when the best time to transplant is, either, but I'm thinking the sooner I can get them transplanted to individual cell packs for further root development and growth, the sooner I can get them into the ground in time to be established before October.
Even though tops die back in summer of some plants that bloom in spring, I don't think the roots are in a similar state of dormancy. Not sure to what extent they're kicking up their "heels" down there, but I understand that roots of many plants continue to grow underground while their tops are playing possum.
'twas all illusion about the coast being clear for gardening today - poor puttycat has a chronic condition and needed a trip to his "favorite" person - our vet. He's fine, now. Can't be more graphic - rather an indelicate situation. And then detours kept coming & ws plants are getting more used to their milk jugs & booty bags.
I'll try to take pictures of my primroses, too, tomorrow. We finally broke down and aquired a dc - hope it's not to complicated to "point and click".
I used a large-holed salt shaker this year for cleome and nicotiana. The seeds came out perfectly with every shake. They seem to have been fairly evenly dispersed.
-Joe
Blue Thanks so much for your help. I moved from Louisiana to Tennessee in Dec 05. I had never grown anything from seed. I have rose champion, sweet william, dame's rocket,columbine, nigella and blanket flower. These are the ones that I have identified so far by the blooms. My puppy dug up all the markers. I like the way they look all togather but they are all tall and in the front of the garden. Here is another angle of it. Any suggestions are very much appreciated.
Betty
My sweet William today. :)
Aw, Joe, I just love Sweet William! It smells so good and is soooo cottagey!
Suzy
Illoquin-- Interesting comments about your WS experience.
I hope when it is mid July you start a thread reminding everyone to plant their Foxglove and other biennial seed.
I was wondering about the timing on biennial seed sowing (at least for our region).
I suppose I should be ordering some Foxglove seed for this sowing. The plants in my garden won't have seed ready to harvest, will it?
What other biennials will need to be started in July?
Thanks. t.
Wellllllll, as far as I'm concerned, they all should be started in July -- the biggest trouble is finding space for them. Not too many people have the luxury of having a true nursery (I know I don't) and who wants pots hanging around all summer long?
The Hardy Biennials to start in July and August are:
Pansies
Wallflowers
Dianthus deltoides and Dianthus barbatus (sweet william)
Foxglove
English Daisy (Bellis)
Myosotis (Forget me nots)
Hesperis/Sweet Rocket -- although it's sort of a weed
Money Plant (Lunaria)
Iceland poppies (papaver nudicale)
Most Verbascum -- I would say all of them, but I'm not 100% on that.
If you don't sow them in July or early August, you would normally sow them in spring, right? Even late winter if you start them inside, BUT you use a lot of garden real estate on non-blooming plants for an entire year, and therein lies the problem. You can find space in spring for seedlings, but you noramlly can't in July, especially in the sun. BUT if you get these going, they die the 2nd year and you can sow in their places.
Right now I have wallflower taking up a lot of real estate, on my patio, no less. :(( I sowed it really early in Jan or Feb inside and it still didn't bloom.
I also have pansies blooming everywhere from last summer sowing and last fall purchasing! They made it find through the winter and bloomed very early...the ones from seed in July are 2x bigger than the purchased plugs, BTW.
In the shade, I have pulled the pansies and left them on cardboard trays to let loose their seeds...it takes 2 weeks. In their place, I put my Caladiums. Pansies are in fullbloom still in the sun, and will continue through mid-June, I think. I can pull them, mulch the area, and sow more pansies or another biennial in July and put them out about a month or 6 weeks later. That is the only timeline that works. (I think)
Yes, all biennials bloom early. In spring or early summer. So, yes, you could use the seeds from those same plants just fine.
Other bloomers that bloom early and peter out in the hot weather will leave also space for biennials. Annual poppies, Calendula, Bachelor Buttons, Clarkia/Godetia, and others I can't come up with the names of right now.
Thompson-Morgan is having their half off sale right now, so if you look for these biennials, you will no sooner get your 1/2 price seed than you will have to sow it! What a deal!
Suzy
Gee. Very thorough rundown, Illoquin. Thanks so much. I will get going with T & M.
I love the foxgloves I got this year. And the wall flowers I think I saw in one of your pics.
Can't wait to get going on this!
(I will copy and paste your analysis into my diary for further reference, if you don't mind.)
LOL! Pasted in your diary? Sure thing, but know that I am fumbling here, and there are flaws in my timing, BIG TIME!
I did take my own advice and placed an order with T&M, including some biennials. I supose Park's will have their 1/2 price sale starting next week and I'll kick myself for ordering so much.
What kind of Foxgloves did you get that you liked so well, Judy? I didn't see many on the T&M website that I adored. One had big blobs of maroon instead of little spots and one had those upside down florettes. So many are just gaudy, but I already know some of the species ones are too plain. I am looking for one that's juuuuuust right, although truth be told, once they bloom, I would probably love them all. :)
Suzy
P.S. Those weren't my wallflowers, unless you meant the maroon & gold colored Linaria (which I love; I just wish I had bought about 4 packs of seed instead of one. It takes a LOT of those plants to make a statement. Which ought to be another thread -- plants you have to clump plant to make a showing.)
I don't know enough about Foxgloves to know what's good or bad, gaudy or nice. (Sometimes gaudy is good. )
I am just amazed that I started mine from seed and they actually flowered. I have white ones, yellow ones and different strawberry colored ones. I think I sowed 5 different kinds in all not expecting any to come up.
I think these are rather sweet in my shady garden in front. Need more though.
That is so pretty!!!! And you could never say it is gaudy! I think it's D. mertonensis.- the Strawberry Foxglove, but not 100%.
I had some old seed and just threw it out on top of the ground when I was cleaning my seedbox and had several come up from that 2 years ago, but still not stalk that I can see. It was so long agoi I forget the name!
Suzy
So you inspired me to clean out my seed box and I threw some leftover digitalis sds out around the other ones...I'll be watching there for some sprouting (probably be obsessed with it!)
I did winter sow D. mertonensis seeds last year. I will have to get some more.
We didn't answer Tortoise' question - http://davesgarden.com/forums/p.php?pid=3556849
Not sure whether what works for me would work for anyone else, but one thing that might help is to mass "like" with "like", so that the empty places are between groups and not surrounding each plant. As a rule of thumb, I would space plants within each group about 1/2 their height from each other, and than increase the amount of space between each group a few inches over that.
It might be fun to bring daylilies and iris forward to interrupt groups of mounders with their blade-type of leaves. Low campanulas were made in heaven for daylilies and so were pinks for iris, but those torenias I see would be nice swirled around the base of the daylilies, and the petunias wouldn't hurt the iris.
I like to position groups so that part of them goes off on a diagonal from whatever the edge of the bed is.
Maybe some of the spacing between groups could double as places to put your feet when getting in there to work - these secondary paths can lend useful geometry to the bed, too.
I like to place groups of perennials where the bed would look best if that were all that was supposed to be in there. Then the biennials next, and the annuals last.
Most of the plants you mention - rose campion, sweet william, dame's rocket and columbine - are not very long-lived in one spot where I live, and probably less so farther south where you live, but all freely self-sow. So does the annual nigella. You might save seed at first - just in case - to wintersow, until you can be sure how they'll perform for you. All of these flowers burn up by mid-July, so it's good to balance them with later blooming plants, or good foliage plants like grasses or plectranthus, etc.
The blanket flower is dependably perennial, and was quite the flopper and sprawler here until I put it out on the street with a "free to a good home" sign. I don't know what kind you have, so can't assume yours will do what mine did. But if yours is like mine, I'd give it a place on the outside of the bed where it can sprawl over the edge into the yard rather all over its neighbors. Having said that, I think gaillardias can make great "socks" (groundcover/carpeter) around large, red or gold daylilies. Throw in the cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit), and you've got a great combination.
I use annuals to complement the more permanent residents and really would hope never to be without sages (my favorite is Salvia guarnitica and its hybrids), morning glories and dahlias for the final crescendo leading up to frost. There are forums on DG for each of those flowers - extremely informative. And hummers visit all of them in our garden. In a small bed like this one, there are dwarf or low forms in each group; although, giving the entire wall behind the bed to a vine would be irresistable to me.
Waddaya think?
I've never met a foxglove I didn't like. As a cottage gardener with some shade, I'm constantly scheming for silver leaves that like shade, and there's a foxglove with silvery, woolly-ish leaves called Digitalis 'Silver Fox' - http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/91239/index.html . But my foxgloves have been hopping and self-sowing around for about 30 years, ever since Hazel handed me some seedlings she scooped up out of her garden back then. I don't treat them like perennials - just yank out seedlings except for ones that land where I want them. Hazel was among the last of the millworker families that were still here when we moved in (the mill had closed in 1972 (begun around 1809)) and my foxgloves keep her and her hospitality to us newcomers alive in my memory.
Blue Thanks so much for all your suggestions. When we moved (Dec 05) in there was nothing in the garden. It is across the front of the house (109 yr old farm house). I just clumped all the winter sown seeds in that far right corner. They did not bloom that spring or grow much. I started putting some putinia's, coral bells, portulica and daylilies in. Then I went to a round up. I added toad lily, salavia, sea holly, and holly hock. This spring I planted several rose bushes against the house. 2 are climbing roses so I hope they will cover alot of it. I also added the torenia,dahlias,pansies and some chinese fox glove. I think I will wait until fall and try to move almost everythig but the roses. With the execption of the daylilies, pansies, roses, putinia and portulica I have never grown any of these plants so far. Now with your advice and a idea of what the plants will look like when grown I hope I can turn this into a very cute garden.
Thanks again
Betty