Autumn sowing of hardy annuals

Autumn, ah that time of mellow fruitfulness as they say. What does it mean to you? Leaves turning to shades of gold, russet and reds, conkers, steaming bowls of soup, autumn light gleaming through the garden, harvest time for apples and blackberries for delicious crumbles and pies. Chilly mornings needing big jumpers and cardigans and getting the scarf out, misty walks, kicking through big piles of leaves. That back to school vibe where you start a new notebook and treat yourself to new stationary like the old days, hearty food like baked potatoes and cottage pie, and shutting the curtains early and getting cosy on the sofa with a warm throw and a good book. All sounds very wholesome! Yes to me it means all those things but it also means the start of planning my cut flower garden for next year. Yes my cut flower garden in 2025 is going to be my best yet. As you can probably tell I love autumn, admittedly you get as many wet and soggy days up here in Lancashire as you do sunny and cold but those precious days when its cool but the sun shines and the colours of the trees are all aglow are just a joy to behold. At this time of year things just slow down for me, I usually work slightly less at Bluebell nursery and get extra time to do things at home, I can have more time in the garden and catching up with house jobs that usually just get abandoned in a busy summer. It gets a bit busier here at Higgledy Garden but I do that work at home and so I don’t have a commute that can get more fraught at this time of year. I get more time to read and write and just relax a bit. Plus I have more time to sow seeds and this is the perfect time and it really gets you ahead of the game.

So we are talking here about hardy annuals, not your tender ones like Cosmos and sunflowers, but those stalwarts of the cutting garden, like Cornflowers, Nigella, Ammi, Larkspur and Corncockle. Some can be a bit more temperamental but if they come through you have the advantage of much sturdier plants which flower well before any spring sown annuals will. To be fair you need to sow them before autumn really kicks in but September is a perfect time, the soil is still warm and we usually get more rains now (I know we have had rain all year this year!!) so the soil is moist. Good conditions for seed germination. But you need to plan ahead and be prepared to experiment (I approach all gardening as an experiment its the only way to learn and what works in one persons garden may not necessarily work in yours). Depending on where you are in the country and how bad a winter we have, you may lose some things but over the last few years of autumn sowing I know certain annuals that really do well for me in my garden.I like to sow in early to mid September and I don’t tend to sow directly into the beds in my garden apart from Nigella but this year I’m experimenting with direct sowing of Daucus carota and Gypsophila as well and will see how that does. Here I will just clear the area and just broadcast sow the area I want to cover, cover light with compost and keep an eye on them once germinated. Thin out if the seedlings are too close together. For most other seeds I prefer to sow in seed trays or modules, prick out and pot on into 9cm pots as needed, but my advice would be to just work out what works best for you. Just sow some of the seed. Then wrap it up and save it, just sow what you need, you can save the extra seed for a spring sowing if needed. Once the seedlings develop I prick them out into 9cm pots and only prick out the number that I need (plus a few extras). I have an unheated greenhouse and can give them some protection over winter but it has been down to minus 10 degrees in there over the last couple of winters so it can still get very cold. I’ve found that seedlings can cope with the odd really cold night but its when we have a prolonged very cold spell that can cause problems. Try and keep them cool and steady temperatures so that they grow steadily and then if we do have the odd early frost you feel they can cope with it. Having said that there are some flowers that seem so resilient and so I would definitely recommend sowing them. For more details on sowing the specific varieties see the Higgledy Garden Seed sowing guide.

So my real favourites for autumn sowing are Cornflowers, I just don’t think you can beat them they can cope with the cold, you get lovely sturdy plants which grow much taller than spring sown ones. These have come through all the recent cold winters in my garden. They start flowering in May and you can keep picking them until at least July, longer if you are ruthless about deadheading them. I love them in bud and in flower so I pick nice long stems with both on, they are airy within a posy and easy to prepare and condition for a flower arrangement. If you just want them in the garden for colour then they have a lovely silvery foliage and the bees and other pollinators love them. We have many cultivars but my real favourites are Cornflower ‘Black Ball’ and ‘Blue Ball’ the single colour cultivars. But for a fabulous mix of colours Cornflower ‘Classic Magic’ has a mix of purple, lilacs and mauves.

The second on my list are Corncockle, another toughie that seems to cope with cold weather. Such a lovely flower too. I grew the pink form this year and also the beautiful white form and the combination of the two was just sublime. They warrant close inspection, just look at the veining drawing pollinators down into the flower. They are just gorgeous. Look great in combination with Cornflowers, Orlaya grandiflora, sweet rocket, Canterbury bells and many more.

Orlaya grandiflora is one of the first of the autumn sown flowers to bloom. Its such a delicate looking flower that belies its toughness I’ve never lost these after a frost. They can be tricky to get to germinate but I’ve found that you really need fresh seed and so I tend to just collect my own of these. I leave a few of the flowers in the patch to set seed and they are big and easy to collect. But just get fresh seed every year of this and you should be fine. They can also germinate erratically over time so I tend to sow in a seed tray with plenty of space so that you can prick out any early birds and leave the others to develop in the seed tray.

Ammi majus and Ammi visnaga are also on my list though I much prefer the latter.  These give fabulous lacy filler foliage, they develop well and into tall plants from an autumn sowing.

I’m not sure how much earlier my Ammi visnaga flowered from an autumn sowing but I use it all the time in July and August as a filler foliage.

Daucus carota that beautiful airy umbellifer that looks just as lovely as a seed head, the flowers close in on themselves, enveloping the seed within the stems of the flowers. I’m going to sow these directly in a raised bed this year, they develop a deep taproot (they are wild carrot after all) and so will develop better in the ground and get established well and grow into good sturdy plants. 

Another good one for direct sowing is Nigella, ah I love these flowers, my favourite being Nigella ‘Delft Blue’ but you can’t beat Nigella ‘Persian Jewels’ for an array of pastel shades. Another plant grown for its seed head as well as it in flower.

I usually sow my Larkspur in very late winter, February but I’m going to sow some in autumn this year and see how they go. Like I said, I’m always trying different varieties but also different ways of sowing to see how it works or if its a better method. I’ve had great success with Larkspur ‘Imperials’.

Calendula have been a bit hit and miss for me, they grow well but I’ve had some losses of these too when there has been a hard frost. I’m going to try again and keep some protected in the greenhouse and then also grow some outside so they don’t get too soft and sappy and might be more robust. I love the vibrant bright orange of Calendula ‘Indian Prince’ and the soft pale yellow almost white Calendula ‘Snow Princess’.Cerinthe is a similar story, sometimes they don’t survive the winter but last year I had amazingly robust plants that stood up to the hard frosts and flowered amazingly with the Orlaya and just kept on going for weeks. So when it works its brilliant.

I’m a bit late to the party regarding Godetia ‘Crown’ only really grew it properly this year and have completely fallen in love with it so this is a must for me next year. Going to try again with autumn sowing for this and treat it like the Calendula and have some inside and some out, see what works best in my garden.

Anyway I hope I’ve inspired you to have a go at sowing hardy annuals and see the advantage of sowing so that you get earlier flowering plants in late spring well before any spring sown plants. They develop into good sturdy plants often taller but for me it also means there is less work to do in the spring when its already a bit manic with lots of other seed sowing going on and it can feel a bit overwhelming so it really spreads the load. So get out into the garden this weekend and happy sowing!

Higgledy Anne

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