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How to Choose the Right Flower Seeds for your Flower Garden
Growing a lovely, colorful flower garden is a truly rewarding experience. Flowers add color, beauty, and fresh scents to an otherwise drab yard or landscape. Choosing the right flower seeds for your flower garden is extremely important for the overall success of the garden. Be sure to know what to look for and what to plant, as well as the prime planting times for your particular region and climate.
Annuals are the most common type of flower that grows in most peoples’ flower gardens. These beautiful flowers are called annuals because they do just that: grow once per year. If you choose to plant annuals, the first thing you’ll want to do is decide which species grow best in your climate. Zinnias, marigolds, and petunias do well in just about any environment. Keep in mind that you can choose different types of annual seeds for each changing season. Certain flowers grow better in different temperatures. You can choose to plant poppies and pansies when the weather is cooler, and then switch over to impatient or marigolds once the temperature gets higher. This ensures that you will have a constantly full and colorful garden, instead of only in the spring and summer.
If you consider yourself a newbie in the world of flower gardening, you may want to consider purchasing seedlings instead of attempting to grow your garden from the seed itself. Seedlings are basically plants that have begun to grow already, and are in their infant stages of growth. Most seedlings can be purchased individually or in bulk at most nurseries and home and garden stores. If you can’t find what you’re looking for locally, many online companies and mail order catalogs should have what you need. While seedlings are somewhat more expensive than just buying the seeds in packets, it is a little bit more of a valuable investment. At the same time, planting your flower garden from seedlings gives them a much better success rate and a better chance at survival. If you want to grow seeds from the plain seed it is much more of a challenge, but it can be a lot of fun to watch them flourish and grow. Just remember if you choose to plant seeds for your flower garden instead of seedlings, more attention will need to be paid to their needs such as water and sunlight until they have achieved roots and begin sprouting from the ground.
Once you’ve decided on a flower garden layout and what seeds you want to plant, there are other things to look for before you make a purchase. If you opt to get seedlings (which is highly recommended), be sure the plants have green sprouts coming out of the dirt. In addition, check for any signs of parasitic activity (holes in leaves, etc) to be sure the flowers are healthy. If you find some that show any signs of distress, you could very easily pass these parasites onto the other seedlings and ruin the whole garden, so be very careful of this before buying your seedlings. Also, make sure the roots are not coming out of the bottom of the pot. This means the roots have already been exposed to air and might not take too well to moving into the ground. Look for small buds that are still unopened. Choosing the right seeds for your flower garden can make a huge difference. Shop around, pick out some beautiful colors, and most importantly, have fun growing your beautiful garden!
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