Garden Centre

Friday, February 13, 2009

Sowing garden plants from seed – February

Now I’ve got my unheated greenhouse, I don’t have to limit myself so much in terms of summer annuals. So one seed I’m sowing now is the old fashioned snapdragon, properly known as antirrhinum. It’s actually a perennial, before anybody shouts, but usually grown in the UK as a half-hardy annual. The common name comes from the little ‘mouth’ that the lower petal makes, and by squeezing the sides of the flower you can actually make it ‘snap’ open and closed.

To be honest, it can be a bit of a swine to grow – the seeds are tiny and need light to germinate, so you put them on the soil surface, not under it. It can take up to 18 days for germination and most will respond better to some bottom heat. Until this year I’ve bought my snapdragons as bedding plants, but this year I’m starting them in the greenhouse, on a shelf with a little greenhouse heater underneath, and with a propagator lid on top of the tray – it will be interesting to see if I succeed.

Snapdragon seedlings hate to be crowded, and damp off very fast, so sprinkle them well apart and as soon as they start to show, remove both the lid and the heat so that they don’t exhaust the energy in the seed and become leggy, which will make them fall over and die. If you’re growing them indoors, start them between six and eight weeks before the last frost in your area. They like a lot of light, so don’t expect them to germinate in a shady corner.

Once they are established, give them water from underneath to avoid them developing rust, to which they can be prone. In addition, water seedlings in the morning, as spending a night with wet roots is guaranteed to send them to the big nursery in the sky.

They are such a complex looking plant, and children love them so much, that a little extra effort in getting them to germinate is well worthwhile, and you can save seed from year to year to keep your plants renewed.

Yellow snapdragon courtesy of echoforsberg

Labels: antirrhinums, bedding plants, garden plants from seed, greenhouse sowing, snapdragons

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:25 AM

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