OK to grow in pre fertilized soil in a pot.
Lightly cover seed soil temp 68-86F & takes 5-10 days to germinate. DO not pinch plant till 4-6 sets of feaves have formed. BUT flowering will take 16-18 weeks if you do NOT pinch...... add 2-3 weeks to flower if you DO PINCH>
I comend you for ypor desire to please your mother ... next year start earler

Lucky mother to have a daughter like you.

I pinch back very few plants. In my opinion they do not need it. In the Philippines it is going to be very hard to keep the soil at the right temperature for them to germinate at this time of year. viorges gives you the temperature range for germination. Plants do not need the sun to germinate so if you can put your pots in the shade until they are up. The pots should be kept moist but not sopping wet. When they are up you can then move them into the sun.

Marigolds would have been a better choice. They only take about a month to flower.

Hi Merrin :)

Last month I sowed a wildflower mix from Burpee's that contained cosmos in my soil. I'm from nearby Guam and right now it's been a hot summer. It's supposed to be rainy season, but we've only had about 50/50 days of rain and days of hot-dry. I sowed the seeds in poor soil with some stuff to keep the bugs away, then lightly covered them with some kind of soil mix my dad made (i believe just the same poor, clay-ish soil I planted them in and some potting soil) and watered them for a few days. Then some rain started coming and generally I have stopped watering them.

Now the cosmos are the tallest, and are about to bloom, and it's only been a month :) They were the first to grow. I didn't pinch them or anything. Hardly did anything.

I suppose it depends on the seeds you get, your area... I did this wildflower sowing as an experiment to see what would grow here. I'm a beginner gardener too and it's best to experiment with what will grow where you are, because even if our climates are similar, there are so many different micro-climates depending on the very spot where you plant them.

Cosmos were one of the very first flowers I successfully grew (I am still a newbie!), they were soo delicate & pretty, attracted nice butterflies & bees, some ladybugs too. The kids loved them! They were also very esy to save seeds from & we did & shared them with several relatives & friends, we're planting some from saved seeds now. All we did was barely cover the seeds with seed starting mix in cups. They germinated quite easily & did pretty well actually throughout our very hot, humid, rainy summer & our record freeze for Florida in winter. They reseeded themselves as well. Very easy flower & pretty!