It's June; your annuals are coming along or in pots. Your perennials are growing fast. So why not just sit back and not worry about your flower beds until next spring?
There is a good reason not to do this. Now is the time to start perennials and biennials for next year. It is easy, personally rewarding, and it can save hundreds of dollars. Consider this, a small starter perennial will usually cost $2 and up to $10. If you want lots of those delphiniums and want them in specific colors, what can you do? Plant now for next year and arrange your colors and heights to please you. Don't depend on box stores or nurseries to have the selection you want.
Here's what I am doing right now. In the past two days, I have used 21 8-oz styrofoam cups, 21 fold down plastic sandwich bags, and a modest amount of good seed starting mix to literally start a few hundred perennials: 3 kinds of delphiniums, 5 kinds of hollyhocks, 2 kinds of echinacea, Canterbury Bells, 3 kinds of foxgloves, etc. Most of these seeds I bought from a very old seed company, Crosmanseed.com. Their seed prices range from fifty-nine cents to eighty-nine cents with a modest delivery charge. Very specific special varieties I will buy at stores or order on line at other seed companies.
Now, you are ready to plant your seeds for next year's plants.
- Take a styrofoam cup and puncture a couple of holes at the bottom. A sharpened pencil or pen does fine.
- Write on the cup the name of the plants and the date of sowing in the cup.
- Fill the cup with slightly moist growing medium, leaving about a half inch from the top.
- Carefully shake out a few seeds (you should have plenty left for later sowings if you need them,) and gently sprinkle them over the top surface. At this point you may press the seeds into the soil. Sometimes it is good to sprinkle a fine covering of sand or vermiculite over the seeds if 1/4th cover is suggested on the seed packet.
- Loosely put the fold down sandwich bag over the cup, leaving it somewhat pulled up at the top. This does not need to fit tight. It allows some air to seep in.
- Place the cups in a sunny window sill or even better under a flourescent light (I use a 48" shoplight).
- Check with regularity for germination and growth. When the seedlings are big enough to handle, wet the medium thoroughly and gently pull the seedlings out with roots intact and place in a much larger container to grow on until they are large enough to put in the garden.
- Protect from sun scald by gently laying a piece of fifty-nine cent coarse nylon netting over them. This gives enough shade to harden them off. After several days, you may remove the netting and the plants should be hardened off and ready for full sun. If the plants are shade plants, then skip this part and put them directly into the shade first thing.
- These little plants will require careful watching so that they don't dry out. Monitor them well and next summer you will have all the blooming size perennials you could possibly want. Your only limitation is your imagination. Use garden books and local gardens for inspiration.
-- Gloria
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