Landscaping and Gardening Info

Who doesn’t like planting annuals into the landscaping to provide lots of color to fill in the gaps that appear? One cheaper way to get those annuals is by buying packs of seeds and growing your own. Here’s some tips on growing annuals from seed for fill any holes within your landscaping and gardening.

Seed Propagation- Growing Flowers from Seed

Annuals can be grown readily from seed in most cases. This should be readily acknowledged by the copious quantities of seed packages available in winter and early spring at your local grocery store, home improvement store and Walmart. Even the health food stores carry varieties of organic seeds.

The method of growing your flowers depends upon the delicacy or hardiness of the seed and may require planting in frames or pots initially. Transfer the seedlings to the bed only when the weather is sufficiently mild and the plants well grown. This timing will depend on your local weather conditions and the plant being grown.

Many perennials and biennials may also be propagated from seed. This method, however, is not suited to all perennials, and some of the methods to be discussed later will yield better results. Typical perennials which can be propagated from seed are:

• Hollyhock
• Christmas rose
• Columbine
• Bleeding heart
• Baby’s breath
• Foxglove
• Butterfly weed
• Primrose
• Larkspur

Outdoor Seed Sowing

Depending on the variety of seed, most annuals and perennials which can be grown by this method can be planted in seedbeds outdoors. The time for planting varies. A few can be sown in autumn, but most should be sown in spring. To be safe, don’t plant before the last frost has passed.

The big disadvantage of outdoor sowing is that you sacrifice control over the circumstances under which the seeds will germinate to a large extent. You can’t control the weather. In an indoor hotbed, or coldframe, conditions of moisture, heat, etc., can be largely regulated. Not so in the outdoors, where dryness or changing weather can destroy the weaker seeds quickly. Just imagine if you are not there to cover a bed at the sudden return of winter. Having lived places that have unexpectedly received snow as late as June, this can be a very real concern depending on where you live.

If an outdoor seedbed is planned, choose a spot with good soil. Then work in a portion of your compost pile, pulverizing the soil to the depth of 3 inches. Don’t make the seedlings fight against big clods of soil and chunks from the compost. Adding some sand and peat moss increases the effectiveness of the bed. Most seed may be planted very near the surface. The deepest one should plant is 1/2 inch. Check your seed package for details of planting depth. The bed can then be lightly tamped. Lastly the bed should be well-watered. Be sure not to flood the area and wash away your seeds.

Sowing Seeds Indoors

The two most important factors in indoor sowing are soil texture and drainage. Texture is of greater importance in germinating seeds than soil fertility. A mixture of equal parts of good soil, coarse sand and peat moss makes a fine bed. Again don’t make the seedlings fight against big clods to grow. The bottom of the seed pan should be filled with gravel or shards of old flowerpots. If you use a more modern plastic tray system, drainage holes should already be in place in the bottom of the tray. The seed should be
sown as evenly as possible.

As soon as the sowing has been completed, and the soil lightly tamped down, the pan or flat should be immersed in water until the surface shows dark and moist. Excess moisture is then permitted to drain off. This is far superior to overhead watering. The box should not be allowed to dry out until after the seeds have germinated. This is not to say that the seed box should be sopping wet, merely slightly damp. Germination will be hastened if the pan is placed in a warm, dark place.

As soon as germination takes place, the seedlings should be placed in full light. Shredded sphagnum moss is the best medium for seed germination. Use of it tends to prevent any possibility of “damping-off,” which is a grave threat to all seeds.

© 2005, Sandra Dinkins-Wilson. Find more articles for Flower Garden Lovers at our informative website, http://flowergardenlovers.com.

OK, let’s go buy some flower seeds and get them started. At this date, in some areas, you may be able to direct sow them into your landscaping right where you will want that color. But grown some in pots or in an area set aside for the purpose for using to fill any holes that appear in your landscaping later on. Happy sowing!