Excellent video! I have been waiting for this update. What it seems to come down to is how early in the season someone decided to plant them. Great work 👊🏻🌻👊🏻
Thank you! This was a fun one to do. Now I want to try it on some of my other native varieties. There’s nothing more fulfilling than starting these from seed ☺️ thanks for watching!
Love it! That's on my list for this winter, I'll start a few batches earlier than usual so we have some content to send out before seed starting season!
Just found you and subscribed 😊 thanks so much for sharing. Your video was so clear and interesting to follow. I look foward to checking out your other videos too
Many more coming up! We run a native plant nursery as well so video production slows down a bit in spring/early summer, but we're just about finished at the nursery so I have quite a few videos planned in the next few months. Thank you for watcing!
Great follow up video to part 1 and your experiment. Very informative, well spoken and explanation of the cone flower seeding and planting. I had a question you might can help me with. I would like to grow the cone flower indoors, but put it a large kitchen window that gets 4-6 hours of direct sunlight. Will the clone flower do well and survive even though its not outdoors? Appreciate it if you can answer or shed some information. They are beautiful plants and I would like to keep them inside if possible.
Thank you!! This was a really fun one to do! For your kitchen window question: 4-6 hours of sunlight is a little low for seedlings, some supplementary light would really help! If you don't want to get too crazy with your setup, I recommend a desktop grow light that you can place near your seedlings (especially during the winter months when daylight is so short). I use this light (amzn.to/3zZ0Isx) for some of my seedlings outside of my grow setup. You don't need to get anything too expensive, just make sure it's adjustable so you can get it nice and low, close to your seedlings!
In the western states in areas that don't get a "frost" our soil temps don't get consistently below 40° so stratification is necessary for me. None of my seeds germinate without it AT ALL!!
I didn't even think about that! We had a really mild winter last winter (like REALLY mild) and a lot of our plants/seeds/crops suffered from it. My coneflowers, bee balm, and lupines hardly seemed like they spread at all from the previous year! I'm glad we have the fridge stratification method, to me that's easier than trying to winter sow and stratify outside when the weather is so unpredictable. I hope you have good luck this spring!
Yep so this is a good point - often soaking the seeds can help bring them out of dormancy as well. There are many native seeds that DO require the cold strat period, and Coneflower is one of those ones that people swear on one side or the other. Obviously since my non stratified seeds did germinate without soaking, they would germinate just as well if not better with a good soak. I'm cautious on soaking as I've dealt with some rot in the past, but soaking in the fridge helps prevent this as well. Some seeds can also be germinated with boiled water + overnight soak before planting. For my next experiment I'll do a soak first and see if that offers the same results that my cold strat did!
I always cold stratify my bee balm! My very first year I just planted it without a cold strat period - they germinated just fine but didn't survive more than a few weeks. I should try it again now that I'm more experienced with seed starting, but I've just had great success with cold stratifying my bee balm/bergamot!
My coneflower germinated quickly and grew rather quickly once the warm weather hit! Many people choose to plant native plant plugs in the fall so they don’t have to go through the hot summer weather. I’d say you have time and it’s worth a shot!
When I start very early in the year (Jan/Feb) I typically will get a bloom or two in my first year. If I sow seeds in the spring, I usually won't get a bloom until year 2.
