6,340 Garden Web Discussions | Growing from Seed
depending on the plant and variety they can produce alot of flowers and can bloom for quite a while. the ones i've had produce alot of seeds very well and very easy and reseed themselves with just as much ease :) you can dead head them if you wish to try and control the reproduction but its not easy to get all the seed heads, and they reproduce like rabbits, just one seed produces a plant that can produce lots of seeds :) but its a beautiful plant and flower :)
congratulations on your calendula and look forward to it being in your garden for years go come :) no matter what i do i cant get rid of this lol. i discovered this beauty after a bird or wind draft left some in my garden one day; as many of my favorite flowers happened :) there are many varieties, i prefer the ones that don't grow so leggy like and lean and fall over. i prefer the ones that aren't as tall and have a more compact plant to them. but all in all they seed very well. you can save the seed if you wish to "control" where to plant them but they self seed Very very well and will pop up alot anywhere. the seed pods burst and release the seeds so some may get carried by the wind a bit.
I start swiss chard in 3oz solo cups (with holes poked in bottom) filled with dampened seed starting mix, vermiculite or a mix of both. I plant 6-8 (presoaked) seeds in a cup, push them lightly into the soil then cover lightly with more soil. Use a spray bottle to keep the top of soil damp until the germinate. I usually get around 12-20 plants. Once they germinate make sure they get lots of light. I then transplant them out after they get their first set of true leaves. I don''t thin them in the cup, just tranplant what I want out into the garden. When you plant mixes you can see what colors you have before you put them out. I have not had any luck starting swiss chard directly in the garden.
Good gardening, Mary
You can grow Fagraea in Ontario?!? I would struggle with it here in LA.
See if this doc is useful
Here is a link that might be useful: growing Fagraea
Sheryl
I've grown them many times from seed. And as suggested above they would probably like a fair amount of sun in your area.
My method:
Place in ziplock bag with moist material (sphagnum, pot6ting soil, vermiculite, etc.) and place in butter compartment on door or in crisper of your refrigerator. When at least half of your seeds have grown a root, remove them and plant in pots at room temperature. Plant very shallow at about 1/8" (3 mm) and spread a layer of coarse sand on the surface about 1/4" (6 mm) deep.You can also remove them individually as each forms a good root and plant. Keep moist and warm till they appear and plant out when you want to. Some keep them in pots for 1-3 years but i generally plant in a seedling bed in garden after they get their first true leaf.
George.
sheryl, you've sown them in pots already and your plan sounds fine. Just as a space saving step, I'll often put them into a tiny ziplock with about a tsp of moist vermiculite (will easily accomodate 40 or so seeds) and leave that on my desk for approx 2 or more months before sowing, exposing to chill. I normally do the chill outdoors here where my late Fall and Winter temps can often be a day/night average around 40F.
There's no need to cover with landscape fabric any seeds you've sown in the ground. If the plants had been your own and dropped ripe seed, they would have laid on the ground, been watered occasionally until Fall rains began, spent a winter outdoors and most likely have germinated for you in earliest Spring. IF birds or rodents hadn't carried them away :)
Just be sure not to cut your warm/moist or cold/moist periods too short, I try to give seeds at least 10 weeks in the second stage of cold/moist. I don't have a harsh winter like you do, but if you are bringing them in, how warm would your sunny window be? After warm/moist, cold/moist periods, germination begins for me while cool - in the 50 - 55F range.
I top with grit or vermiculite to discourage mosses or algae from forming (with any sown seed that will be with me a few months), the coarse sand mentioned by George would be good too.
Most of the cannas in my garden were started from seed. This is the second year I've grown cannas from seed, and have had close to 100% germination. File the seeds (try grabbing the seed with a pair of pliers and rub against a wood file) until you see a white spot. Take a container (I use an old water bottle) put the seeds inside and cover with about an inch of warm to hot water. Leave the container on a heating mat, and rinse the seeds once a day. You'll see a root poke out within five days. Then, transplant the sprouted seed (I do 2 per 3" pot). Seal in a ziplock bag, and put on heat mat. You should seed a sprout poke out within 2 weeks guaranteed. I've tried seeds collected from last year, and have also tried seeds a few years back, and it's worked great.
I have also had success growing cannas from seed but the seed is very hard. I finally found a way to put a small hole in the seed, after trying EVERYTHING! I held the seed in one hand with needle nose pliers and pressed it hard against a metal rasp in the drill on high speed. It is the only thing that worked. I could not get anywhere with a file or a sharp knife or scizzors or any of the dozen things I tried. Now I know what works and will use that method for all of them in the future.
After you soak them in warm water, you will know if you have penetrated the seed coat as they will swell and double in size.
I don't seem to have a long enough growing season to get mature seeds before the frost. Would it help if I started them in pots indoors earlier in the spring?
I would love to grow more variety of canna from seed. I grew dwarf white and one that is probably yellow this year. I have red flwrs/green leaves also. I am looking for seeds for the Tropicana variety or any fancy spriped leaves and the red leaves. I bought a Tropicana gold last fall but it didn't survive the winter :-(
Oh. I failed to mention, one of the grasses turned out to be millet and another looked like what old farmers might have called milo maize. Wild birds here liked the mustard, the milo maize and the small sunflowers while still on the plant in the garden patch.
I tried to grow seed for my chickens this year. I planted millet, amaranthus, poppies, flax and sunflowers. The only one that came up were the sunflowers. The local groundhog ate them all when they were about 4" tall. I know the poppies need cold to germinate and it was late spring when I planted the others.
Why didn't the millet, amaranthus and flax seeds grow?
yeah, I have tiny ws seedlings of poppy mixed transplanted about 2 weeks ago. And now, they look similar to the pic above. :)
it does indeed look like a poppy of some sort, has it bloomed by now? :)