Cosmos is a sweet and simple flower.
Everywhere it blooms brightly in summer,
Burgundy, pink and white petal
The breeze sways the thin stem,Once upon a time, many years ago
A star fell from the night sky,
Since then, the garden is filled with cosmos flowers,
I've been dreaming about a flower like this for a long time!
The cosmos flower is familiar to everyone since childhood. This easy-to-grow, brightly blooming plant grows everywhere, in city courtyards, schoolyards, and garden plots. Once sown, the cosmos will self-seed.
Cosmos, or Mexican aster, belongs to the Asteraceae family and can be either annual or perennial. It is a herbaceous plant with slender, multiple stems bearing large flower heads with vibrant petals in colors of white, pink, crimson, and red.
The center contains a core of dark tubular flowers, with yellow anthers above the center. The cosmos's leaves are lacy, reminiscent of dill.
Here in Siberia, cosmos begins to bloom at the end of June and blooms until the first frost.
When the flowers fade, dark, oblong seeds are formed.
Pollination occurs with the help of insects.
I've always loved this simple flower. It grew in my grandmothers' and parents' flower beds, and of course, as soon as I started living with my family, I immediately planted cosmos.
After moving to Siberia, I also planted cosmos at my first dacha, buying seeds from a flower shop. I chose bright, beautiful colors, but instead of flowers, I got vigorous bushes with dill-like foliage.
The first buds appeared on them only at the end of summer, but they never bloomed, and soon with the first autumn frosts the cosmos froze.
Later, at another dacha, I sowed purchased cosmos seeds, but again I got dill bushes, and only a few flowers bloomed.
At the end of summer, I collected seeds from the cosmos plant that was blooming profusely in the courtyard of our apartment building. I sowed them in the spring and also bought a double cosmos plant.
From the double seeds grew flowers like these, there were very few of them and they were not double at all.
And from the yard seeds - multi-colored, white, pink, burgundy.
Now these wonderful flowers from my childhood are blooming in my garden too. Although they reproduce by self-seeding, I still collect seeds and re-sow them in the spring, just in case the fallen seeds don't survive the winter.
This beautiful cosmos with large, carmine-red flowers grew on its own.
In the fall, we placed the trimmed stems in a compost heap, and a year later, we added the rotted compost to the flower beds and got this pleasant surprise.
Why do store-bought seeds produce a bush with a thick stem and lots of foliage, but almost no flowers? At first, I thought it was the fertile soil, and the plant was simply overfed and turning into tops. At my old dacha, I sowed cosmos in well-composted soil.
In the current one, I sowed the seeds densely, near the fence, in a sunny place, I didn’t fertilize the soil with anything at all, I just dug it up and sowed it, the store-bought seeds almost didn’t bloom.
So it's not the soil, but the seeds. All these varieties with double or shell-shaped flowers, with unusual orange, chocolate, or striped colors, are finicky and don't bloom at all. Maybe they should be grown from seedlings, but I don't feel like bothering with that, and what if I end up with sprawling bushes without flowers? Or maybe they don't like our Siberian climate, and somewhere in the south they bloom profusely. So I won't be sowing store-bought seeds anymore. These simple, yet beautiful, bright, and undemanding flowers are enough.