Sometime in late winter I plant annual seeds outside in the garden. I use the arbitrary dates of Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day to bookmark the prime time for planting my hardy annuals, but it’s really pretty flexible. I like to do it just before a snow is predicted, but that isn’t completely necessary either.
Some of my favorite flowers to plant this time of year include the California poppy shown above. These incredibly drought tolerant little plants can be perennial in Colorado, but at 6500′ elevation they act more like annuals for me, reseeding where happy. Some years I have a big patch in the no-water garden, other years only a few come back. Don’t plant them in an area that has rich soil and lots of irrigation–they don’t need that! They love gravel mulch, and will reseed there better than in open ground.
Lots of hardy annuals can be planted this time of year. Bachelor’s buttons, shown above, are another that will respond well to this schedule. Any plant that has seeded itself in your garden should be able to adapt to late winter sowing. The advantage to planting now is that the seeds will be in the garden when the time is right for them to germinate, and you will get much earlier blooms than if you wait to plant them in May when you’re planting bedding plants.
Here’s a partial list of ones you might like to try: Larkspur; Coreopsis tinctoria (Calliopsis); Berlanderia lyrata (Chocolate Flower); Lallemantia canescens (Dragonshead); California Poppy; Nigella (Love-in-a-Mist); and Calendula. Those are all plants that like to germinate in cooler temperatures. You don’t need to dig in your garden, just broadcast the seeds on the surface. If the ground isn’t frozen, you could use a rake to scratch a bit in the soil. This is one reason I like to plant when I expect snow: the seeds will be settled into the ground by the snow as it falls. Another reason is that the seeds are protected from creatures who might like them for a snack.
If you want a lot of color for just the cost of a packet of seeds, plant some hardy annuals this year for countless blooms outside and enough flowers to cut for bouquets to bring inside.
(A tiny digression: petunias are hardy annuals, too, meaning that they can take temperatures down into the 20s without damage. My grandma used to have a patch of petunias that reseeded in her garden every year, old-fashioned ones that were much taller and more fragrant than the varieties you see today. I’m looking for seeds for those heirloom petunias–I’ll let you know when and where I find them.)
