I'm always desperate for wildflowers this time of year. We had a great wildflower year in 2007. Since then, meh. That was a lot of work in 2007. I haven't had the energy since.
This year I bought some wildflower starts from Annie's Annuals. Snails ate all the nemophila. The gilia just up and died. Too much rain? I tossed around packets of seed. That never works, but I tried it anyway. Guess what? It didn't work.
The phacelia started out all right, but the seedlings etiolated and now appear doomed. Layia and limnanthes never appeared. The thing to do is start the seed in large clay pots and plant out the sprouts from there after they get 2-3 inches tall when there's still plenty of rain in the forecast.
Poppies are coming along, but no flowers yet. Lots of clarkia too, but they don't perform until May or June. I'm sure glad I let the mustards go to seed. They flowered through all the rain, mostly servicing the syrphid flies from what I could tell. The mustards are on the way to seed now, which shouldn't take long. I'll collect some for next year (like I did last year) and let the others fall where they will. I'm 99% sure all the mustards that made flowers were ones I grew from seed in pots and transplanted out.
2 comments:
Dig the gnomes.
"I tossed around packets of seed. That never works, but I tried it anyway. Guess what? It didn't work."
I've had poor success with this method too. It turns out that the best wildflowers I had were when I scattered seed and then some workers came and trampled all over the freshly seeded area. I was upset at the time, but I had incredible germination rates.
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