Hi, I'm curious if my Viola tricolor seeds would do well if i planted them in early September? Are there any annuals that you would suggest planting in early September. Please let me know. -VT
You live in California, so you've got a good stretch of growing weather ahead of you. I'd go ahead and try Viola tricolor and any other hardy annuals that appeal to you. I'd plant them as soon as possible rather than waiting for September and keep them lightly watered if necessary -- just enough to keep the soil from drying out. To some extent you can take your cue from nature here. Most flowering annuals start producing seed from about midsummer onward, so this is the time of year when some of those seeds -- unless they have some kind of dormancy mechanism to inhibit rapid germination -- will have begun to sprout. The main thing is that you want to be sure they have enough time to build a healthy root mass and store up sugar to get through the winter. There should be time for that in Berkeley, I think. Not so much here in Maine -- and yet I regularly get self-sown seedlings popping up all the time, many of which do sail right through winter, though sometimes the tinier ones need an extra year to flower.
Should be OK. In Berkeley they'd probably flower right through the late autumn and winter. A lot of Pansy cultivars flower through the winter even up here at 55°N latitude.
