If you have read my post about sowing seeds in winter, you might be interested to know, what was the result. Aren't you? ;-)

Well, it has turned out great! Everything sprouted, so I can recommend this method for those seeds that need to rest for a winter or two before sprouting. I had rose seeds, apple and crabapple seeds, various species of magnolias and some more I can't even recall any more, hidden in snow last winter.

Roses and crabapples have sprouted vigorously and have been growing fast too! Here are some of the rose species and cultivars, but unfortunately I have lost the name tags. I later recognised one of them to be a red-leaf rose, and most of them probably are seedlings of Rosa 'Juhannusmorsian' , but I remember sowing various kinds of rose seeds. Since I had no idea what I was growing, I just planted them randomly on the side of the yard. :-P It may be that I will have to dig them up some year if they happen to be some spreading cultivar though. Below you can see Malus purpurea 'Kadetti' seedlings.

There are certain types of flowers that I don't really like. Daisies are among them. I don't know why, but they just don't really impress me in any way. And most of them smell bad too. But Among those daisy-lookalikes there are some species that are exceptions. Like coneflowers (Echinacea). They bloom late into autumn staying bright after most perennials have passed their blooming time.

The only thing that I don't like about them is that they never make seeds here. They are so late that sometimes they don't even get to bloom before it's fall. So you need to choose a nice sunny warm spot for them and then water them throughout the summer, because warm and sunny spots are often too dry for coneflowers.

A few years back I had no idea how many different varieties there are of coneflowers! I had only seen the dark pink ones and my mother never encouraged me to have those either. She kept telling me they would never bloom.

Last year I bought some coneflowers in pots in the spring. I planted them along the wall, because it was the sunniest place I could think of. Only one of them bloomed (probably the one I watered most) while the rest of them just made leaves. A couple of them hated the heat and kept wilting and coming back all summer. This is the one that bloomed right next to tiger lilies. Needless to day that the lilies loved the hot and sunny place they were given.

I only ordered two kinds of plants; 'Summer Cocktail' and 'Hot Papaya' and this doesn't really seem to be either of them. But I still loved the vivid colour of the bloom. The plant was growing right next to the path leading to my front door, so I walked past it every day, and it really made me smile.

During the summer I was sowing numerous kinds of seeds, Echinacea among them. The seeds sprouted well and I got lots of little Echinaceas (the common type) and planted them in the garden. I'm not sure how old they'll have to be before they bloom, but that I will see that later on. Maybe this summer, maybe next. If they are still alive. I'm not sure if I should be hopeful about that after the autumn since the cold came before snow.

But since I love so much this "not-hot-papaya" of mine, I thought I would look for more brightly coloured Echinaceas for my garden. You can not believe how difficult that is. I haven't been able to find many places in Finland that would sell anything but the common 'Magnus' or alike. I recall seeing 'Green Envy' in some mail order catalogue one year, but that's in the past. I tried having a look at the foreign garden stores as well. Yes, some of them have some new colourful varieties, but the prices were so high I just decided that I could live without them.

Then I remembered that hey,  I have been growing these from seeds earlier, so maybe there are some seeds available of newer cultivars as well! I'm not sure if there are, maybe yes, but the best I could find after a very short search was eBay. Again.

I have been shopping at eBay shops gardeningbylee and moustic2307. I realise that the seeds sold on these shops are openly pollinated and may look nothing like the mother plant, but the good chance is that they will look exciting nevertheless. And if I wasn't able to get the correct plant when buying them in pots, then I probably don't really mind what the seedlings will look like as long as they look "different". And even if they don't they will look happy and colourful in the autumn anyway. The only way they could produce a big disappointment was if they didn't sprout at all or proved to be something completely different. What I mean by this is something different than Echinacea. Yes, this happened to me once... These seeds were a bit pricey considering there's no guarantee of the result, but I can live with that. I just won't order anything in the future if they all will grow to look like the common coneflower in my garden.

Here are the pictures that helped me choose the seeds I bought from eBay shops gardeningbylee and moustic2307:

It looks like some or most of these photos were from coneflower.com even though used by the eBay shops. Thanks to whoever took the pictures. They are here as reference to the shops selling the seeds. 

The cultivars (or as they were informed) are from top left to right :
'Tomato Soup', 'Tangerine Dream', 'Supreme Cantaloupe', 'Sunset', 'Secret Passion', 'Secret Affair',
'Raspberry Truffle', 'Pink Double Delight', Meteor Yellow', 'Marmalade', 'Hot Papaya', 'Gumdrop',
'Guava Ice', 'Glowing Dream', 'Flamethrower', 'Firebird', Colorburst Orange' and 'Champagne Bubbles'.

There were lots of other varieties to choose as well, but as the result is likely to be something else than the mother plant, I thought these were quite enough. These are going to fill my garden completely for a few years. Or will they? I have been told that these plants are quite short lived. I'm hoping that this isn't true.

In any case, I will be reporting about the result as soon as I see them. And probably even about the progress along the way.

I have been doing some seed shopping again. These really aren't planned purchases; I just buy seeds whenever I happen to find them. Well, not just any seeds of course, but interesting species or cultivars. I have been buying both perennials and annuals. I like sowing seeds and I'm quite happy about the fact that by doing so I save money if compared to buying plants.

I really appreciate annual plants because they nicely fill any empty spot in the border. My flower benches still have those empty plotches because my garden is newly founded and all my perennials, shrubs and trees are really small. I would say that annuals are exactly what I need, although I'm not sure to what extend, because I have dozens of perennial seedlings from last summer as well.

I would like to have all those pretty annuals on my yard, but as I'm not too keen to have endless rows of seedpots on my windowsill, I have given up on quite many species. Now I only buy those seeds that can be sown outdoors directly. I know this is no news any more, as I have been talking about it at least a couple of times already.

But what do I buy then? Here are some of my latst buys.

Lord Nelson seeds are sold in K-rauta, Hortus seeds in City Market and Weibulls seeds in Prisma.

My favourite annuals are poppies, of course. But as you can see, I like many others as well. I have been buying California poppies (Eschscholzia californica), different kinds of Clarkias, annual larkspur (Consolida) - I love the perennial one too! - Linanthus, Zinnia, sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) and Calendulas. I didn't buy any marigolds (Tagetes) this year, but I really liked this 'Vanilla' marigold ( below) last summer.

This Tropaeolum 'Salmon Alaska' was another favourite of mine! Beautifully spotted leaves and blooms with shades oh apricot.

Here's a Papaver somniferum 'Lilac Pompom' in front of some Cosmos that never bloomed....

And this corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) must be a 'Shirley Double'. There's a blend of beautiful pink and strawberry red shades in this seed mix, and I just had to go to have a look at the blooms every single day, because they were so fantastic.

Bachelor's buttons (Centaurea) were a nice fill in the border as well. Here I have red and pink flowers, other colours were sown elsewhere.

There are many beautiful varieties of California poppies. This pink one probably came in a seed pack of 'Thai Silk'.

These feathery black poppies were a surprise. I thought I was sowing 'Drama Queen' seeds, but only one of the flowers actually looked like that variety looks in the pictures I've seen. If anyone knows what these are called, I'd like to know! Then I could buy them again. Last autumn was so rainy, that all the seedpods were destroyed before they were good to harvest. These are not as stunning as some other dark varieties, but they certainly looked "different"! (And they were at the right spot!) 

It looks more purple in bright morning sun, but really black for the rest of the day.

Calendulas weren't ready to be harvested either before the frosts came. I don't mind though, because they didn't look like anything they were supposed to. I mean, I love yellow (I do!) but these were supposed to be pinkish...

Those tiny little Linanthus flowers are really cute and the plants form a dense, feathery looking, healthy green carpet. It looks really nice in places were you need a low ground cover between bigger plants! I'm not sure if you are able to see them behind this bold cone flower (Echinacea). Their flowers only seem to be open when it's sunny.

People who have been sowing perennial or tree or shrub seeds are probably familiar with the term "stratification" which means simulating winter conditions in order to make seeds sprout. Many plants originating from colder climate produce seeds that don't sprout before they have experienced a winter period.

Last winter I had my fridge full of seed pots. As the stratification process is not the same for all the seeds, I had pots with labels explaining how long they were supposed to be kept in cool. I suppose most people just have small plastic bags with moist sand and seeds in the fridge if they intend to have anything stratified, but I had both bags and pots and I have to admit I had better success with pots.

Last winter I acquired lots of perennial and tree seeds that needed stratification, and since I ran out of space, I decided to simply sow some seeds in pots and place them outdoors. There was winter there behind the front door, you see, to be taken advantage of. I didn't just place the pots outside without any protection, but dug a hole in the snow and put each pot in their own hole, then covering them with a good amount of snow again.

This winter I'm having my fridge full of bulbs and rhizomes, so I don't have any space there. I have some Dahlias overwintering there and I just bought some new bulbs from the local hardware store. Since it's not spring yet, I have to keep them in cool before planting them out in May.

I'm not planning to sow lots of seeds indoors this year, actually I'm trying to avoid it completely. But since I collected some rose seeds and crabapple seeds last autumn, I had to sow some of them. I'm not sure if they are viable though, because these seeds I didn't store exactly the way the should be stored... I  have to confess that I forgot those little apples and rose hips on a plate in a drawer and they completely dried out before harvesting the seeds! So I may have been sowing something that's never going to sprout no matter what I do.

Here the ever optimistic me has been sowing some seeds of Rosa 'Juhannusmorsian' and Malus purpurea 'Kadetti'. The pot is waiting to be placed in the snow.

Here is a hole I dug for the pot. 

As you can see, I have been doing a good job: the pot fits perfectly.

And here it is. You would never guess there's a pot with seeds beneath the snow, would you? 

The weather has been very mild now, it was about -1 °C when I did this. But last year I did the same at -25 °C and it didn't seem to make much difference, as those seeds sprouted. I guess the thick layer of snow (last winter was very snowy) protected the seeds well enough.

I'm not saying this is a proved way to make the seeds sprout, but I did this with several different seeds last winter, and it worked for some. Then again, I never saw some sprouting at all, but that was the result with some of the seeds I tried stratifying in the fridge as well. I probably did something wrong with them, or they were some very old seed stock with no viability at all. (I would like to think the latter, but the first is more likely to be true.) Those that didn't sprout last spring, I left outdoors for the whole summer. Some rose and magnolia seeds sprouted late in the summer. As some pots had nothing sprouting by the time autumn arrived, I just left them outside for their second winter. Let's see if that'll do the trick or if I will give up on them when summer comes. 

This is definitely the time of the year to buy some seeds for the next summer. Usually I start buying seeds as soon as they appear at the shops and when the first seed catalogs arrive. So I have been doing that for a couple of weeks now.

But seed stores online exist all year round, so I have been purchasing seeds even during the summer and in autumn. Today I have been shopping on eBay. I like buying on eBay, because sometimes you find a cultivar that doesn't exist at your local stores. I do buy online at "real" seed stores as well (such as RaraVäxter or Plant World Seeds) so it's not exclusive in any way. Actually I have been buying seeds for year online as well as at supermarkets, garden centers and practically from anyone who is willing to sell seeds at all.

Last summer I bought seeds from some Finnish hobby gardener online. They were all perennial plant seeds, so it will remain to be seen if they come true from seed. I know it's more than likely that especially Aquilegias will be something else than the mother plant. My favourite find last year was Touchwood Seeds and all those Aquilegias I wish to have in my garden next summer unless all the little seedling die during the winter. I kept sowing Aquilegias all summer last year, so I haven't been buying any new Aquilegia seeds yet. Now I'm interested in different poppy cultivars instead, both perennial and annual species.

I had some lovely annual poppies in my garden last year. Perennial cultivars were a disappointment, because all the seeds that were supposed to produce pink poppies turned out to be orange. Even the Papaver orientale cultivar I bought as pot plants, proved to be orange and not burgundy that they were supposed to be. But the annual Papaver somniferum cultivars were spectacular! Not all of the seeds grew up to be what they were supposed to be (especially those bought from various eBay stores) but some of them were even better than expected.

Today I have been shopping on an eBay store called Southern Seeds and this is what I bought:

 There are oriental poppies, Bellis, annual poppies, larkspur, zinnias and California poppies, Gaillardia and Monarda. I hope they will be as spectacular as promised and that the seeds will be fresh. The amounts were quite small, like 25 poppy seeds per bag, so if the viability rate is low, I won't have too many plants. Bellis is a biennial plant, so I will only be able to observe the result the following year.