for me!! I sowed Zinnia and Shasta Daisy seeds on 1st March. No signs of anything yet :'( Is there any hope that I will get anything out of these? Is it possible that entire packets of these seeds were bad? I bought them from WalMart at 10c each. I think I should have gone with the 89c pack. More importantly, other than buying plants for the garden, is there any other flower that will bloom this year if I start from seeds? Thanks!!
Sounds like you might have gotten some very old seeds, usually they will still be good a year or two after the date on the package and no telling how Walmart stored them between seasons either. Any of the annuals will bloom the same year you plant the seeds and most will drop seeds to grow again the same year if you have a long enough growing season or the seeds will germinate the next spring. Last year I sowed a wildflower mix of seeds in a large planter, they reseeded and grew two more times before our first freeze.
Sorry to hear about your seeds. I do that all the time. As Toni said, try again, perhaps something else.
Thanks for your responses!! Toni - Very interesting! I never knew we could get a second round of bloom from annuals. How do we ensure that they bloom the next time. Do I leave the seeds where they are when they drop? Oh and is it too late to plant hollyhocks? How about Daisies? I really wanted shasta daisies this year.
Yep, let the blooms die and go to seed and the seeds drop to the ground. You can also gather some of the seeds to plant next year in other places. I have a large wooden planter that I filled with wildflower seeds last spring, over the summer and fall the number of plants increased and I had continuous blooms until December when we got our first freeze. Some of those plants were the grandchildren of the original ones from early spring. Some have already started coming back this spring from the seeds that dropped last fall.
Hiyah Tina, Tell more about your seeding technique. Describe what you did. I can't think of a specific germinating problem with the seeds of these two plants. If I have germinating problems from time to time it is always the same--too wet and too cool...so the seeds rot in the ground. I sometimes plant them too deeply or if I water from the top it makes the seeds go deeper. I usually water from the bottom. Toni may well have hit on something about the seeds being old. You might look on the seed pack to see the exp. date.
