April 17.2025
As the weather is super nice and warm, I decided to do some plant action. Natural dye plants seeds I ordered online have arrived, and it will be a good timing to start seedlings indoor. As I heard of the slugs at the Elisabeet, I am skeptic to sow direct on the ground. My strategy is to grow seedlings indoor until they are a good size and transplant to the Elisabeet ground.
Today, I sow 2 types (not sure if they are different kinds..) of Tagetes Erecta, Scabiosa Atropurpurea and Cosmos Sulphureus. I also got Coreopsis, but I decided to sow this a bit later.
Here are how the seeds of each plants look like
Then, I have no idea how deep they should be sown… so I started to watch a lot of youtube tutorials… and here are what I gathered.
Tagetes: soak in warm water for 5 hours and place it on the surface of the soil. cover gently.
Scabiosa: make a small 3mm deep hole, place one seed capsel (without breaking) and press it gently. do not cover (it needs light to germinate)
Cosmos: Stick the seed into the soil
Coreopsis: place it on the soil and cover gently. The seeds are very very small.
Then, I thought it will be nice to experiment having beans between the Persicaria Tinctoria plants as a collaboration plant. Beans fixes nitrogen to the soil, and Persicaria Tinctoria needs a lot of nitrogen. I guess it is usually used as alternating plant to fix nitrogen to soil and not grown at the same time… so not sure if it works. But I will try. In the worst case, we have beans!
24.April
Some of them are already sprouting! How quick! Only Scabiosa is still quiet.. but I see some actions in the whole!
Here are my youtube research: How to sow Tagetes
How to sow Scabious
How to sow Cosmos
How to sow Coreopsis