I always want to plant something new, unusual, and unfamiliar in my flower garden. I like to sow tiny seeds from seeds and watch them sprout, develop, form buds, and blossom into beautiful flowers.
When visiting seed stores, I always linger by the shelves with flower seeds. You'll find all sorts of flowers here, including exotic ones that won't even grow here, and you can bet the seeds of these exotics are unlikely to germinate. But gardeners buy everything, hoping to grow even an unusual flower from the moon itself. Early in my gardening career, I also bought beautiful packets of foreign flowers without a second thought, and I still find myself drawn to the pictures.
Last year, many flower seeds failed to germinate—delphiniums, clematis, black cohosh, and serrated lily. This year, I've encountered a similar problem: petunias didn't germinate well. So, I decided to test the seeds I bought for germination. I'd previously tested all the flower seeds I collected in the fall.
What flower seeds should I sow at my dacha?
I will divide them into varieties.
Annuals
Dahlias
I bought seeds of the Pharaoh dahlia variety (mix) with unusual purple leaves and my favorite low-growing Figaro variety.
Of the Figaro dahlias, I like these "redheads" the most, although flowers of other colors are also beautiful.
Aster
Peony aster Red Tower - I have my own seeds of white and purple tower.
Very beautiful asters - large, double, bright flowers, tall bushes.
Rudbeckia
Rudbeckia - a favorite variety of Autumn Colors and golden terry - I really like these flowers.
They bloom profusely all summer long, right up until autumn. To enjoy the beauty of these flowers sooner, I sow the seeds in April in a greenhouse.
For some reason, the seeds themselves don’t germinate, but in the spring self-seeding plants appear, but they begin to bloom closer to September.
Lavatera
I bought white Lavatera seeds, and I have my own pink Lavatera seeds.
Marigold
I've already checked all my marigold seeds for germination and even planted a few; it was a shame to throw them away. They've already started to color.
I will sow the new Fantastica variety with large, double, bright orange flowers for seedlings in the greenhouse, like all the other marigold seeds.
Arctotis
I also sowed Arctotis Harlequin (mixture), this is the first time I’ve planted flowers like this.
They're somewhat similar to gazania, which I decided not to grow this year because it disappeared last rainy summer. These are the seeds of this flower—the shaggy little flounces.
The Arctotis has already sprouted; to my surprise, the first shoots appeared on the fourth day after sowing the dry seeds. These flowers have large cotyledons, but no true leaves yet.
Datura
This summer, a beautiful datura bush with huge, snow-white flowers like gramophones grew in our backyard flower garden, and I decided to plant one at my dacha, too. I bought some datura seeds, the Ballerina Mix variety; there were only three seeds in the packet.
I soaked them to speed up germination, but not a single seed sprouted. I waited patiently for a week, then another, but there was no change. Later, I sowed these three seeds in a small box, where cyclamen sprouted on one half of the box. The seeds of these cyclamen, which had also been slow to sprout, were also growing, hoping that maybe the datura would sprout again.
In mid-March, I was buying onion sets, stopped again near the flowers, and again bought the datura variety Troubadour with large, snow-white flowers. I immediately sowed several dry seeds in a small box, and then soaked a few grains and placed them on a damp disk, putting them in a warm place for germination.
There were a lot of seeds in this packet.
The description says that datura seeds are difficult to germinate, but I really want to grow datura—another name for this flower. Days go by, and the datura won't germinate.
Perennials
Carnations
I've been growing grass and feather carnations for years, but last summer the flowers were few and far between, almost completely overwhelmed by taller flowers. I bought these seeds. They're the low-growing flowers.
I will sow them directly into open ground in mid-May and build a small mound for them.
Violets
I also bought a horned violet, the Doll variety, also a low-growing perennial, only 10 cm in height.
We have a violet violet with yellow stripes growing at our dacha. I'll sow it outdoors in May.
Coreopsis
Coreopsis grandiflora, variety "Solnechny Ray," with delicate yellow flowers, is very beautiful; it grew at my old dacha. I found some seeds; I'll sow them for seedlings in mid-April.
Germination test
I'm going to sow perennials and annuals for seedlings in the next few days, and I decided to test the seeds for germination beforehand. I soaked 3-5 seeds of each flower on damp cotton pads.
All the seeds have sprouted, I sowed them, they all came up, which means they can safely be sown as dry seeds for seedlings.
The orange marigolds and datura are still unchanged, lying in a damp disk and showing no signs of sprouting. The datura, sown in the ground with dry seeds, also isn't sprouting. It's possible that the few seeds I took to test are bad, or perhaps all the seeds are non-viable. I'll certainly sow the marigolds separately and see if any of them sprout.
For some reason, I've been encountering a lot of seed germination lately, not just in flowers but also in vegetables. I've come across poor-quality pepper, cabbage, lettuce, parsley, carrot, and bean seeds that simply didn't germinate, or only produced a few sprouts.
Do you ever come across seeds that don’t germinate?