It has large purple-red petals surrounding a central cone make, which makes it a really a pretty flower. Sign up to receive updates, promotions, and gardening tips. Description: Purple Coneflower is a medicinal plant. After Last Frost, 70F Full/Part Sowing Method, Seed Depth, Direct Seed Spacing Transplant or Direct Seed, 1/4, 4-6 Mature Spacing, Days to Sprout. And in this case more medicine for you and your community. From the base of the mother plant, new plants sprout from her. Better germination means more plants for your beautiful garden. In my sandy loam garden soil, my coneflowers multiply vegetatively at least a little every year. Warm weather crops like peppers, tomatoes, or eggplant require. The stratification practice will greatly increase the percentage of seeds that germinate. If it is very cold your seedlings will not grow at the same rate they would in warm weather. Take the seeds out of the fridge and sow as you normally would into flats or small pots in regular potting mixture. If it is not then use a spray bottle to gently spritz the paper towel or other medium until it is wet enough again.Įchinacea requires about four weeks of cold stratification. It has a fibrous root system, rather than the long taproot and woody crown found in other native species, making it more adaptable to garden conditions, and more forgiving of dividing and transplanting. Keep a record of when you put the seeds in to stratify or add a notification to your phone calendar for the date the seeds will be ready to take out. Purple coneflower, or Echinacea purpurea, is by far the most popular variety of coneflower. The green leaves emerge frosted white and hold this pattern until very hot weather arrives. Make sure to label the bag or tray with the date and plant species. Echinacea purpurea 'Sparkler' PP 17,298 (Sparkler Coneflower) Echinacea 'Sparkler' is a truly unique 2005 sport of Echinacea purpurea 'Ruby Giant' that forms a nice, dwarf, compact clump to only 26' tall by 18' wide. Moist paper towels should be damp to the touch but you should not be able to wring excess water from the towel.

If you have a lot of space or a fridge just for this you can sow your seeds into flats of moist soil. You can also use moist vermiculite or sand instead of the paper towel. Then wrap the seeds in the towel and then put that into a labeled plastic bag in the refrigerator. I follow a very basic process with fairly good success.

Echinacea requires cold and moist conditions. By easy, I mean you can walk into just about. An easy native to start from seed is the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). A third winter sowing survivor It’s a beautiful time of year, and also the right time to start flower seeds indoors, our topic for this week. Cold stratification attempts to mimic winter conditions that help break down seed coatings and prep seeds to wake up from dormancy. And, I spotted a few Zizia sprouts popping up in their milk jug greenhouse. Today I am starting the cold stratification process for the Echinacea purpurea which I will plant outside later in the Spring.

Purple coneflower sprouts