This week: Native seeds for a spring start
Hello!
Last week we dug into bare root plants. This week, we’ll talk sourcing native flower seeds in the spring.
If you’re reading this in the northeast, it’s the right time to start flower seeds indoors. While there are many kinds of native flower seeds that you can sow directly into the ground, I prefer to start seeds inside so that I can tell exactly what has spouted. No looking at the ground and pondering if it’s a weed or a native plant seedling for me!
Finding Native Seeds
The hands-down easiest native to find in seed form is purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). By easy, I mean you can walk into just about any store that sells seeds—from Lowes to your local garden center to a grocery store—and buy a pack of these natives. One $3 packet of seeds will give you more than enough plants for your own garden, plus some to give away.
In addition to Purple Coneflower, the following native seed packets are fairly easy to find at most well-stocked garden centers:
- Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) - this is a short-lived biennial
- Orange Coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida) - confusingly, this is also called Black-Eyed Susan
- Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)
- Butterfly Weed/Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Go online and you can find a bounty of native seeds—check out the selection at Prairie Moon Nursery and Prairie Nursery.
Starting Seeds in the Spring
The first step to starting native seeds in the spring is to determine whether or not they can be sowed directly into the soil without some kind of pre-treatment. If you read a seed packet and see phrasing like “sow in the fall” or “before the last frost” you’ll know you should cold stratify. I rely on the germination codes on Prairie Moon Nursery’s website to tell me whether this step is needed. I simply search the native I’m interested in and see what it says.
Of the list of widely available seed packets above, only Echinacea purpurea and Rudbeckia hirta can be sown in the spring without any pre-treatment. The others on the list require a period of cold stratification—anywhere from a week or two to a month or more.
While I’ve previously discussed winter sowing to take advantage of nature cold stratifying seeds for you, you can also accomplish this in your refrigerator—our topic for next week! Get your seed packets ready and stay tuned.
Elsewhere:
As Rudbeckia hirta and Rudbeckia fulgida showed us, my Black-Eyed Susan could be your Orange Coneflower. This blog post from Benjamin Vogt reminds us to learn our Latin plant names so we know exactly what we’re getting.
Have a great week,
Julie