Wildflower propagation

Last year we bought an *extremely* expensive small bag of short growing native wildflower seeds. I think we spread them at the wrong times but hedged our bets by doing it at different times of the year to be on the safe side. Short of the story is we have quite a few wildflowers growing in patches here and there on our property but not nearly as many as we want and it would be crazy to buy a new bag if we can properly propagate the ones we have growing from their seeds.

Some of them have seeded now, some are obviously seeding later, I'm guessing they go on the ground naturally now, but it's so dry here in late summer they probably just sit on the surface doing nothing then when fall comes the temperature drops so they don't germinate then either.

We've started to collect them now, some of the earliest flowering ones are dropping their seeds naturally and we're planning on collecting more all together in the same container as they become available right up til the end of summer because we don't care what goes where.

My initial idea is to scatter them back out in fall since the seeds would have been there anyway on the ground by then, but it get's pretty rainy here in the fall and can be warmish at times and I don't want them to sprout prematurely so I was thinking of delaying until it get's frosty here in mid October.

I dont' think they should be saved until spring because they would have naturally been on the ground all winter naturally and they probably need it for stratification purposes anyway.

Any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated, I don't want to waste any of these seeds again.

Cheers!

 

it depends on what the plants are as to whether they need stratification or not. some don't even if they would sit out in the weather all winter in the wild.

those mixes usually contain a mix of perennial and annual varieties. do you know what the plants are that you want to propogate?

you can easily collect the seeds and store them until very early spring and then start them indoors and transplant when the weather is warm enough.

collecting and storing the seeds might be a better plan - especially if some of what you want to keep are annuals.

 

I'm not sure what they are to be honest, there were dozens of different types of seeds in the bag, but we have a *lot* of seeds collected so far and many more to come. Thousands of them. Too many to start indoors; I just want to replicate what will happen in nature but spread it out over more area. There are probably annuals and perrenials in there, it wasn't one of those cans you get at a nursery with a lot of filler in it, we saw it as an option from a place we ordered a very large bag of dutch white clover from so we decided to take a chance on it. I think it was $80.00 for a half or quarter pound bag, all seeds, no filler.

We have a few acres and many areas that we're leaving quite wild, it's not just a few garden beds, it's meadows and woodland and in some areas sandy soil where the grasses and various other weeds have gone dormant or died from the normal drought we get here every summer but some of those wild flowers are thriving in that.

Basically I just want to spread them more widely by tossing the seeds around as far and wide as possible in those areas instead of getting more growing in the same spots. Not normal gardening I know. :)

Maybe I'll try half in the late fall and half in spring and see what happens.

Cheers!

 

half in the fall and half in the spring sounds like a decent idea...any of the annuals won't survive the winter...so the spring flinging will still have some of them coming up...

those that turn out to be perennial can also be split once they start emerging in spring - another way to spread things around :)

 

Sorry I think I'm dense on this... :) if I have annual seeds and perrenial seeds that I plant (scatter really) in the fall when the weather is going pretty close to freezing won't they all just not germinate until next spring or are annuals by nature supposed to germinate in mid to late summer, grow a bit then overwinter?

 

perennial means it can survive the range of temps in your area - from lowest to highest. annual means it can't survive the extremes in temp in your area - either it's gets too cold or too hot at some point.

so, if you put the seeds out in the fall, some will germinate come spring and some won't. those that don't are from the plants that are annuals in your area...it's too cold for them and even the seeds won't survive the cold.

so, throwing some seed down again in the spring will almost guarantee that the seeds from the annuals will germinate (as well as those from the perennials). there's usually some loss of viability during storage - especially if they weren't stored correctly. there's also the issue of harvesting the seed too early and it just isn't any good.

all in all, putting the seed out twice will still give you some decent results.

both annual and perennial seeds will germinate and then grow in the spring. the plants that are annuals will die off come winter and those that are perennial will die down. the perennials will send up shoots from the roots the following spring...the annuals won't come back at all. unless you have seed, that is.

it would really help to know what the plants are, though! some need to be left to ripen on the plant, others can be taken off earlier, some need to be stored airtight and others not, some need to be a bit covered by the soil and/or mulch and others are okay just laying on top.

without knowing exactly what the plants are i can only give you general advise. it would also help to know what zone you're in, too. then i can be more specific...

 

Ahh! Ok, I see what you're saying now, you mean the seeds themselves might not survive.

We're only harvesting the seeds when they start to fall naturally off the plant so I think we're covered there. I'll store them like all seeds in cool dark and very dry conditions once I've dried them out sufficiently.

Also now that I think about it, these plants all came up from the original bag of seeds we bought and scattered in fall and spring and they are supposed to all be native plants to Canada so I guess any that couldn't survive the conditions or being tossed on top of the ground didn't grow the first time around anyway so I guess we're covered if we replicate what we did last time.

My only concern is that a *lot* didn't come up in some areas we expected them but I don't know if they were spring or fall seedings.

I guess we'll have to be more scientific about it and make note of areas we did in spring and that we did in fall and see what comes up in each area.

I should take some pictures of them and try to ID them I guess.

Cheers and thanks!