Christie’s Blog

Early February 2025

Gathering and Planting Wildflower Seeds:

When, How and Where?

When you start your wildflower patch, strip or meadow you need:

• wild flower seeds, which you can harvest off plants you already have or buy from a company on line,
• a spot where the soil is or can be exposed so seeds come in contact with dirt and sprout,
• a sunny location for sun perennials or partial shade for woodland perennials.
• and sand to mix with the seed when you broadcast them onto the soil.

How to Gather Seeds 

• Wait for flower heads and stems to turn brown or even black in late autumn.
• Cut flower heads off anytime from November through February after the flower head has dried. Hopefully there are still seeds on them. The birds have eaten lots of my seeds by late January.

Coneflower

• After you cut the seed heads off,  put them in a jar and shake them hard. The coneflower is the most satisfying seed  for me to harvest because there are scores of seeds on one flower head.

The seeds in this jar are  from the also huge harvest off one flower head..the Black Eyed Susan!

• If the seeds don’t come off after a good shaking, just pry them off with your fingers. Throw away remaining stems and seed heads.

• Store seeds in a cool dry place where they can get air circulation. You can use a box or a big envelope to put them in.

Hang in there, it takes persistence to clean your own seed.

Perennial vs. Annual Planting Time

• Plant perennial wildflowers after the first freeze in the fall.  Try to plant yearly so you can have   more and more wintering over and coming back the next year

• Plant annuals wildflowers after the threat of freeze in April. Annuals will thrive for one year.

Where

• It doesn’t matter how big the space. You are helping Nature when you plant just a few spots in the ground.

• Prep a place to plant them. You will have to expose scratch up or lightly til the area you will plant the seed so that seed comes in contact with the soil

• You may want to consider clearing a spot in your lawn to serve  the birds, bees, butterflies  and insects. Lawn by the way has absolutely no value , that’s zero value, in helping insects, bees or birds.

You can hide wildflowers behind your garage or along your house if you don’t want to risk seeing the  non- blooming look which will occur.

Below is a brief sketch of how you can make the addition of wildflowers a pretty aspect of  your garden/lawn.

Below are some photos of  wildflower areas we have planted and grown with great success. These are  the seasonal series of wildflowers as they bloomed.

Red clover for early Spring

Poppies for mid Spring

Foxglove and Sweet William for shady areas

Bachelor Button/  Cornflower- late Spring

Coreopsis and Indian summer rudebekia for summer

Bachelor button and shasta daisy

Ironweed- late fall

Give it a try.  Get your kids or grandkids on it! Its not too late to harvest the flower heads. You may have to wait for them to dry inside for a few days, but what else are you doing in this ghastly/beautiful  weather?

Christie lives in Manakin Sabot , Virginia where she manages a 3 acre garden. Her blogs are written from her 35 years as a personal and professional gardener.