Californian Poppies (Eschscholzia californica) are best sown directly into the soil in April / May. They can grow quickly once established, and do well in hot, dry conditions. They dislike being pricked out intensely.
There are a bewildering array of different seeds on the market. See: Tips on Growing Seeds for more advice. These are some of the different types of seed that you can use.
Saved Seeds.
A rewarding aspect of gardening is using saved seeds from your own garden. This is particularly useful for many types of vegetable seeds. If you want to win at a flower show, try getting hold of some seed from a prize specimen. Using saved seed works for many traditional cottage garden plants such as sunflowers, marigolds, nigella and foxgloves. However, it is not worth saving seeds from F1 bred bedding plants like Begonias.
F1 Seeds.
An F1 seed is one that has been carefully grown by selecting two particular pure bred parents. F1 often give great colour variations and offer great uniformity for display. They can be more expensive because of the care gone into growing them. Seeds from F1 types do not necessarily follow their parents.
F2 Seeds.
F2 are seeds from F1 plants. They tend to be a bit cheaper and not as uniform.
If you let foxgloves set seed, they will produce similar plants next year. However, if you get a special variety of foxgloves (e.g. alba varieties), you may want to sow direct from packet, as you cannot guarantee that a white foxglove will produce white children.
Coated Seeds. It is possible to buy seeds coated with fungicide to help protect against rot and aid germination. This is unnecessary if you maintain warmth, good hygiene and prevent waterlogged soil.
Open Pollinated Seed.
If it is not F1 or F2 seed then it is probably going to be open pollinated seed. This means that there was no specific crossing of seed, but, it comes from nature’s choice.
- Seed Selection at T&M
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