Moscow Food Co-op Gardening
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Polite Re-Seeders
by Pat Diaz, from the August 2004 Newsletter
One of gardeners' greatest pleasures is finding "volunteer" flowers coming up all by themselves. Some call these polite re-seeders, as opposed to the noxious week variety which are anything BUT polite. (Do I hear you all shouting DANDELIONS???) Due to our cold winters we can grow re-seeders that others in mild-winter climates call aggressive weeds, such as corn cockle. In the South it's a definite weed pest, but here it re-seeds sparsely.
Many times these volunteer flowers come up in natural settings and in color groupings that make them especially beautiful. Visitors to Sunset Magazine's test gardens love the natural plantings area where the re-seeders come up every year.
Poppies, one of my very favorite flowers, are great re-seeders, and there are many varieties from which to choose. So far I haven't had much luck growing them (I suspect it's because of the dense clay soil out here or maybe the free range chickens getting to the seeds before they even start growing) but I understand that if you sow the seeds in the first big snowstorm they come up nicely in the spring. So we'll see how that works. I have packets of California poppies and Oriental poppies waiting for snow.
It is said that in the 1800s the golden fields of poppies in California were so dense that they could be spotted from thirty miles out at sea! Poppy breeders are continually adding to the color choices and now you can purchase poppies that range from yellow and orange to rose, pink, cream, white, red, and bi-color. The two kinds of poppies that do best as re-seeders are the Shirley poppy (single or double cup-shaped flowers of red, pink, orange, white or bi-color, growing to about three feet) and the California poppy, the familiar orange poppies which we see all over the Palouse.
There are some other members of the poppy family which are gorgeous but don't qualify as re-seeders, including the beautiful crinkly Iceland poppy, the incredible blue Himalayan poppy, the translucent orange Welsh poppy, and the very colorful Oriental poppies. Of the latter group, the Oriental poppies would be the best re-seeders.
There are several other favorite re-seeders that you can choose from, to give wonderful color variety to your natural re-seeder area. (Although scabiosa and cosmos aren't on this list, I'm VERY hopeful that these two plant varieties will re-seed for me.) California desert bluebells grow to anywhere from 6-18 inches tall and wide and are bell-shaped, dark blue flowers. Corn cockle plants have purple-mauve flowers with darker veins and grow to about 2-3 feet tall and about one foot wide. They make good cut flowers.
Desert marigold flowers are bright yellow and have gray-green foliage, growing to about 12-18 inches tall. Godetia flowers come in single or double blooms, ranging from lilac to reddish pink, blotched or streaked with crimson. They grow 18-30 inches tall and also make good cut flowers.
Honeywort flowers are violet-blue tubulars that grow on stems about two feet tall and wide. Larkspur blossoms are beautiful and densely set and come in shades of white, blue, pink, and lilac. They have ferny leaves and grow anywhere from 1-4 feet tall. Love-in-a-Mist plants have blue, rose, or white flowers that have very attractive seedpods after blooming. Many people like to use these in dried arrangements. These plants grow from 12-18 inches.
Sweet alyssum is another big favorite, and these little clusters of white flowers grow in low mounds about 12" wide and tall. They bloom nearly all summer and attract honeybees. If you have trouble locating these varieties locally, try these sources - Renee's Gardens for corn cockle, honeywort, love-in-a-mist, Shirley poppy, and sweet alyssum; Wild Seed (602-276-3536) for California desert bluebell, California poppy, and desert marigold.
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