Seed sowing: February outdoors

Christian Gideon

If have your hands in the soil, you know the words “as soon as the soil can be worked,” meaning, not frozen. Meaning, a good, fine seedbed free of weeds. The outdoor part of my February planting can be done if the soil is right and the weather isn’t so frigid I don’t want to go out. This past week we’ve had mild weather, but the soil is very wet from the rain and snow.

I don’t want to walk in the footpaths of the flower farm, even with the right boots, and I don’t plant seeds into mud, which is too heavy for them. The key for planting, especially direct sowing, is for the soil to be well-prepared—a good, worked seedbed that little roots can make their way into. Enough moisture but not too much. I have had better experience planting in dry ground and waiting for rain to wake seeds up than I have had by planting when it’s too wet.

The seeds I sow outdoors in February, preferably in drier weather than we have now, are a subset of the cool-season annuals I direct-sow in early September. This is my first succession sowing of the year, that is, a repeat of some crops already sown for this growing season. It will yield a later crop of each variety about a month after the fall-planted crop blooms. These will be shorter and less productive than the ones sown in September (which are a couple of inches tall out in the field under frost cloth now), but they are worth growing. In February, I lay frost cloth flat on the ground over the seeds and hold it down with bricks or 6-inch garden staples.

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There are just three key crops I direct sow this time of year. For each, below, I name the varieties I like and find useful. A word about spacing: I sow almost everything through landscape fabric with holes spaced a foot apart, but your spacing can vary based on your circumstances and experience—as well as how you choose to balance how intensively you want to produce with your ease of harvest.

Bupleurum—This seed might be labeled Bupleurum rotundifolium ‘Griffithi’, Bupleurum rotundifolium ‘Green Gold’ or Bupleurum griffithii ‘Green Gold’. Some growers simply call it “Green Gold” rather than by the genus, also used as the common name bupleurum. The seed I have, labeled Bupleurum rotundifolium ‘Green Gold’, is an open-pollinated variety that will reproduce true from saved seed and will self-sow if you let it go to seed in your garden.

The plants are highly productive—meaning they produce a lot of material—and branching, and this is one of the earliest varieties that functions as foliage, though it also produces disk-shaped seed heads of tiny chartreuse flowers. The color is versatile, and bupleurum works well as a base for bouquets and vase arrangements.

Larkspur—I did not grow larkspur when I was growing up, and in the first couple of years I grew flowers to sell, I didn’t know about its proper sowing time. I struggled to get it to germinate but noticed that the self-sown seed in my North Lawrence cutting garden looked great. Then I learned about the category of flowers known as cool-season annuals from Lisa Mason Ziegler’s book and saw what this plant wanted. Everyone likes the pretty spikes of larkspur, and if you sow at the right time you have a lot of flowers grown cheaply.

My most useful varieties are ‘Misty Lavender’ (same as ‘Earl Grey’); a good white variety, such as QIS White from Johnny’s Seeds; and a good, soft pink, such as ‘Galilee Pink Perfection’. These three I’ll replant this month if I can find the soil dry enough and workable, but I can’t wait too long for a winter sowing of larkspur because a few hot days with wind in May will do it in.

Nigella—This is a spice flower; few stems change whatever they go into. Nigella is easy to grow, and productive and versatile. It won’t fill out a bouquet or serve as focal flowers, and they can be tedious to harvest. But the stems are strong, and both the flowers and the seed pods are useful. I have added the flowers to bouquets, boutonnieres and floral/herbal confetti, and I’ve worked with women getting married who used them as single blossoms in their hair.

Several new varieties have larger flowers and more intensely colored pods, and I plan to try the ‘Albion Green Pod’ and ‘Albion Black Pod’. But I have been very happy with the old standards N. damascena ‘Miss Jekyll White’ and ‘Miss Jekyll Light Blue’, and I love N. papillosa ‘Delft Blue’.

All of these are prolific self-sowers, and I take care about where I plant them so the seeds don’t blow into my prairie meadows and get a foothold. For my purposes (I grow for my own design work, no wholesale selling), none of these necessarily needs to be thinned; I can sow six or eight seeds in a hole cut in the landscape fabric and let as many grow and bloom as will.

I also find that because some self-sow even if I try to cut everything, it helps to have an area permanently set aside for these direct-sown annuals. It can get to a point where there is too much mixing among the different varieties, and then I hoe some areas up entirely and clear them to keep it from getting out of control. But with some mixing, it’s charming—effectively several rows of cottage garden.