Taming wildflowers - wildflower gardening - includes related articles on wildflowers

Sunset, Nov, 1996 by Jim McCausland, Lauren Bonar Swezey

Check the guidelines on the package first, but in general, scatter seed at the rate of about 1 ounce per 300 square feet (that's 50 to 100 seeds per square foot!). Knowing the ingredients listed on the can or packet will help. If you buy a 12-ounce can that contains 75 percent inert matter and 25 percent seeds, you've just bought 3 ounces of seed and should sow accordingly.

Inert matter isn't necessarily bad. Because [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] tiny seeds can be difficult to sow evenly, producers often mix them with rice hulls or some other extender that makes it easy to see where you've scattered seed.

Timing varies by region. Planting in fall or winter is best in mild-winter climates. Commercial wildflower growers in Lompoc, California, sow in December, for example. In the Northwest and cold-winter climates, spring planting is usually more successful: fall plantings are subject to too much winter kill.

After you've sown the seed, rake it lightly into the soil, then water well. To help you identify weed seedlings, sow some seed in a nursery flat at the same time you sow the rest in the ground. After seedlings emerge in the garden, compare them with the seedlings growing in the flat. They should be identical. Any seedlings that show up in the garden but not in the flat are probably weeds. Pull them.

Water and weed regularly during the growing season and feed twice with a complete fertilizer (controlled-release is a good choice). Cut back wildflowers as they fade, but let them go to seed if you want a repeat show next year.

Bloom time depends on planting time. You can make multiple sowings to get three peaks of bloom in long succession. Sow some seed in one bed in fall, for example; sow again in spring about a month before the average date of the last frost, in an adjacent bed. And finally, sow some seed in a third bed after the last frost.

WHERE TO BUY SEED

Nurseries and garden centers often sell a variety of mixes. Some even sell seed out of barrels in fall. If you can't find what you want near you, you can order by mail. Most catalogs offer seed suitable for a wide variety of climates.

Clyde Robin Seed Company, Box 2366, Castro Valley, CA 94546; (510) 785-0425. Catalog free.

Moon Mountain Wildflowers, Box 725, Carpinteria, CA 93014; (805) 684-2565. Catalog $3.

Plants of the Southwest, Agua Fria, Route 6, Box 11A, Santa Fe, NM 87501; (800) 788-7333. Catalog $3.50 (price list free).

Wildflower Seed Company, Box 406, St. Helena, CA 94574; (800) 4563359. Catalog free.

Wild Seed, Box 27751, Tempe, AZ 85285; (602) 276-3536. Catalog free. Seeds for the Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, and Sonoran Desert.

RELATED ARTICLE: What's a wildflower?

When you think of wildflowers, you probably think of blooms that carpet hillsides for a few weeks every spring. With that in mind, it seems that wildflower mixes should be simply blends of those kinds of flowers, right?

Wrong.

"In the early 1980s," one grower told us, "our wildflower mixes ran heavily to native wildflowers. But we learned that people really just wanted easily grown flowers with a long bloom season. Now that's what we give them."