Biennials To Sow Now For Stunning Flowers Next Year | Perennial Garden

July is the perfect time to sow biennials. It gives them a chance to go ahead and establish themselves so you can plant them out here at the end of autumn and then you'll have flowers next spring. So that way you kind of save a year otherwise you're having to sow them in the spring that first year they're just going to be green then the second year they're going to flower but sowing them here at the end of summer you kind of skip that step and you already have flowers next spring and that's what we're doing today. That's true so we have one of these digitalis here that's finished flowering had a long big stem here and notice they are green on the top here that means they are not quite ready yet after the flowering but all the way below here they are brown and starting to open that means they are ready to be collected and notice I have gloves on because they are actually poisonous the digitalis here so what I do you can use your hands too but I'll just use a scissor here to collect them and as you can see I have a little filter here then you can see there you already have from one little seed pot here I have like a hundred new digitalis. So what we do with this one you could either if you just want to have them all over randomly in the garden because they do get tall so you can we have a few out here in the front but they are so elegant here but you could the first method you could also just collect them now and spring them around in the garden and then you will have new digitalis next year but with this one it's also we like to have a little control over the process and where we have them because sometimes you don't know if it's a seed or weed or it's this new baby digitalis so we collect them and then we will sow them in trays up here in a minute and if you just let itself sow which it will do really really well you won't get flowers until the second year that's another thing the reason why we're doing them now is we can already have flowering the actual flowers not just green spin but actual flowers next year so let's get started sweet williams these are another really great one super easy to collect super easy to sow and July is the best time to do it that's true and this one was a really almost it has really black foliage and almost black flowers like dark really dark flowers and as you can see the seed pods are all brown dry and they start to open up here so i can actually just drizzle them out here in my hand there we go and then we will also collect them and start sowing them up in trays as well perfect and we're just putting them if you're new to our channel we use a lot of coffee filters that's all this is so even if you wanted to collect them now and not sow them in july if you wanted to wait till the spring because you just want foliage that first year you can do that the coffee filter is just what we use to keep them dry so another one i like to sow now here in july is agalaya it is like in some areas it's perennials short live perennial or a biannual so what i do i take just a hand here and then i just pinch them off and you can hear them really being ready they are all brown here and they revel and hold it up to your microphone i think they can hear can they hear maybe if not it's a great scene and then but here you can really see compared to the other seeds they are really much larger blacker so they're easier to handle and we will also sow these so yesterday we finished collecting the seeds and this morning we're going to sow them and i just added water to my you can use potting soil and normally it's quite dry when you get it so i just added water and really mixed it in and and you can reuse the cheapest one we actually use soil that it comes in a big sack it's for tomatoes it's some of the cheapest one it's very nutritious but really it's really good for when you sow i don't go ahead and use seed sowing soil because first of all i think it's really expensive and if the plants would self-sow out in the garden it's also in nutritious soil so this works for me or for us and what i did to really see that it's perfect to sow in i kind of boil it up like this and if it keeps the structure then it's really fine exactly so that's after we've added a little bit of water to get it at the right consistency yeah because normally it's pretty dry you can also just add water but this way you have a big huge amount already to use so what i do i have my my tray here that's reused really washed nicely and always remember to add drainage holes here so extra water can come out so you don't overflow your new seedlings here so what i do i take a few handfuls maybe two depending on my how big my hand it may be two and depending on how big your tray is of course but these are just old meat trays that we've just washed and then recycled this is what we use for winter sowing for any of our yeah all of the seeds that this man collects and sows but they have a really good shape and keep the form and notice i don't push down i let it be airy the the soil here don't push it down and some of the seeds we collected yesterday for example the the sweet williams here that we have here that the dark leafed one and really dark red flower they will be sewn here i'll add them now and then i'll add some soil on on top but some seeds needs to have light to germinate so you do need to remember that so here now because it's really nice and and actually wet here don't add water otherwise if you feel it's still a little bit dry you can have a little spray here that i just then you can add a little bit of water on top here and then i just take my seeds these ones remember with my really dark hand here now from the soil but these are really dark here so these are just i don't put one and one i just really drizzle them roughly over everywhere here because later on then you can repot them and add them out in the garden so and these one don't mind to be close together and then i just take a little bit of soil on top here just so they are covered a little bit here so don't cover them too much with too much of soil here there we go so this is the sweet williams ready to go and then i have my always really good because it's hard to remember what kind it is so i add a little name tag just like that then i'll pop them in the greenhouse out of direct sunlight and keep it watered so the surface doesn't dry out and when they have the second set of leaves you can repot them and then place them directly out in the garden and then they will really grow and be established for for next year and flower then so these ones are ready to go in and then we take the next one here the and this one is a different one that's the digital is the pink one and these need light to germinate so these just go on top of the soil so again i'll take a handful or two around two and these smaller ones just again i don't a little bit more i won't push the soil down and then i take my seeds here and the reason for not pushing the soil down is because later when you water it if it's too compact the water would just sit on top and then drown the seeds so that's actually why we don't why it's not a great idea to pack your soil in and push it down you don't want it too compacted yeah and here's just the leftover seed pods here and these ones are really they're gonna fly if i'm not careful in this it is a windy morning so here they are you can see they are really small so these are just sprinkle on top of the soil here really gently like that whoops and then you can whoa it's oh it's windy here then you can add a little bit of water here and that water will help them stay down yeah so instead of pressing them down and again don't cover these with soil because they need that light to germinate i need these ones over here there we go and then i just add my tag here digitalis that's the pink one and then i'll add it in the greenhouse again and keep it watered because these ones are on the surface so they were more likely to dry out so do keep an eye on those and if you don't have a greenhouse you can have them near a window seal or even in a pot outside just cover so that the birds don't pick in the in the pots so there's different places you can add them and these ones actually when you repot them they have a second set of leaves because they digitalis gets really big leaves it's really good a really good idea to repot them one by one so that will take a bit of a time with these ones to repot them but um they will really be they will have the green foliage this year and then next year we'll have the two meter tall stems of flowers and you can either have them in groups or just around in the in the garden as well so they will be really pretty it's hard to imagine that this greenhouse is empty but it's just getting started if you're new to our channel goodness gracious this greenhouse will be full of things very very soon here's the first two going in and some other ones i'm going to do is um forget me nots stedmore we call them and hollyhocks and nat viole what else do i have here vabaskum kongelys and wallflower good luck and some agalaya as well so all these are going to be sold in here and then later on repotted and then out in the garden before winter comes because then they can have a great time to establish the the roots get all green and strong over winter and then they were ready to flower next year speaking of putting things out in the garden we already sowed some ticker tailors when beginning of june was it yes beginning of june exactly so june or july as soon as you have those seeds ready to collect you can go ahead and sow those but what i wanted to show you was what they look like when they are already big enough to put out into the garden and where we've placed them shall we do that now let's do it okay we're taking you behind the scenes what lives right next to our fence these newly sown hold on let me get over there and they have grown really big actually after come when they first came out these were sown and then yeah i'm beginning really early june sowed in the trays and then repotted a little bit in the greenhouse and then before holiday i placed them out here and look at them how they are doing they are creating all the and this is in a big group i might need to move some a bit in a different area but these are going to be you wouldn't believe it but they'll be two meter tall next summer and they're already flowers so that's another reason i know i keep repeating myself it's that teacher in me but uh getting them started now we'll go ahead and get this stage of their life over so that way they'll flower next year that's true and if you then keep doing this every year then you'll every year have a steady flow of just beautiful these two-year plant here that they have this first year with foliage and then the second year with a flower exactly why don't we sneak out or i'll gently follow you i won't make you guys follow me back through our awful path actually let me show you the path it's not that bad this is the path to get around the garden a lot of people have asked how do we get back here to the back that's how we leave a small gap until large plant stuff so okay we've got a lot of these to get back to a lot of seeds to so we've got a whole greenhouse to fill let us know in the comments if any of these biennials or short-lived perennials are in your garden and when you prefer to sow them but until then thanks so much for watching