Sowing Seeds: August 2024

I will be doing this series called “Sowing Seeds” where I tell what seeds I’ll be starting each week/month from now through spring/summer 2025. I have already done an extensive plan for what I want to plant, where, and how many for the upcoming season.

This month, I’m sowing some hardy annuals and perennials. This is what I sowed yesterday – Aug 18th.

• Coneflowers – PowWow Wild Berry, Cheyenne Spirit, Feeling Pink, and standard Purple
• Snapdragons – Snapshot Pink (I’m sowing these now only because the bed they are to be planted in is already empty and had nothing growing in it this summer. The rest of my snapdragons will be started next month.)
• Pansies & Violas – 9 varieties
• Dianthus – Sweet Red (Again, only because the bed they are going in is already empty. I will start the rest of my dianthus seeds in October.)
• Rudbeckia – Prairie Sun
• Verbena bonariensis (perennial – this one might be a little tricky from what I’ve read)
• Scabiosa – Fama Deep Blue

I don’t like sowing each seed in an individual cell. I prefer to sow multiple seeds and pot up into cell packs once they’ve germinated. So I have a total of 20 coneflower seeds of one variety in two cells in this deep-root 50-cell tray I used for almost all of what I sowed yesterday. Side note: coneflower seeds typically don’t have a high germination rate which is why I sowed this many. I definitely don’t need this many to plant.

A total of 472 seeds sown, all but one variety I’m keeping outside on a table sheltered by a few trees. I did cover them with this white row cover material (lets light through) in case something came along and wanted to dig around in the tray. This happened to me last fall with some of my pansies.

Another advantage to sowing all the seeds like this in just 1 seed tray (versus 6-7 trays) is being able to cover it quickly if it rains heavy (or moving one tray into my greenhouse during a severe storm). Wouldn’t you know, a few hours after sowing these, we had a random storm pop up, and it rained fairly hard. I went out and covered it with a shallow 1020 tray so the fabric wouldn’t get weighed down and the seeds that were surface-sown wouldn’t get washed into another cell. Once there is decent germination, I won’t have to worry about this.

I did put the Verbena bonariensis seeds in my grow room on my growing rack, without lights for now.

I’ve read they need about 14-28 days around 60-86° F with cool 60° nights to break dormancy, and the seeds like the soil on the dry side. That is going to be tricky. Looking at the weather forecast for this week, I might stick them outside, covered, since we are having unseasonably cooler weather for August here in Alabama, with highs not going over 90° and lows dipping down into the 60’s. We’ll see. I am going to do a followup on these if I can get any to germinate.