permaculture

["Johanna Huss Dowd" <johanna_dowd@earthlink.net>]

Also, you need to know how your seeds germinate. Some seeds need light to
germinate, so they would not come up with leaves, or even soil on top of
them. Some seeds might need to go through a cold period (stratification)
before they germinate. This is particularly the case for plants native to
regions with cold winters.  Some others might need to be nicked
(scarification) to encourage germination. I would not rake leaves back on a
seedbed, as it would act as a deadly mulch. Many seedlings are so tiny they
would never be able to penetrate the leaves, had germination occurred.

Johanna

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Claude William
Genest
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 8:13 AM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Planting Wildflowers

I haven't had much success with wildflowers either so don't take what I 
have to say as tried and true - Is your flower bed weed free? Often 
raking will turn up otherwise buried and dormant weed seeds..... 
Depending on the size of the bed, what if you got a big bag of peat 
moss and/or potting soil and laid out a nice clean seed bed and then 
covered the seeds with a bit more moss and then the leaves ?
The other thing about wildflowers is that they boom the first year with 
all the annuals but peter out subsequently when the pernnials are 
supposed to take over so perhaps remember to spread out some more 
perennial seed in years 2 and 3....

Claude


On Monday, March 14, 2005, at 11:48 PM, DEBORAH THOMAS-VIGLIANO wrote:

> I'll be planting some wildflower seed in the next couple of weeks, 
> into a flower bed which has 3 or 4 inches of leaves.
> Some are very tiny, which I haven't had much luck with in the past. 
> They never germinate- or something eats them before I notice. I 
> thought I'd ask for tried-and-true methods for planting these tiny 
> little seeds.
> What I had planned to do is rake away the leaves, scratch the surface 
> with the garden rake, sprinkle the seed around, and gently rake them 
> in. Would it be too much to rake the leaves, or some, back over the 
> seed to keep them moist?
> Thanks in advance. I hope to have some color soon.
>
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