Sow native perennial seeds now and leave them protected and undisturbed over the winter. In the coming seasons, you’ll have lots of free native plants. Plants, trees and shrubs may be dormant as the soil freezes for a long winter, but it is possible to continue the growing season. With native seeds and a simple wood frame in your yard, you can try winter sowing certain native perennials now for propagation later.
Here’s the idea: A lot of our native perennials need to go through a winter period to break their dormancy, which means the time to sow them, if you want to propagate a whole bunch of them yourself, is now.
And here’s the benefit: If you have a meadow or a pollinator garden, and you want to grow some more native perennials in those spaces, you can either spend a bundle of money in the spring buying plants, or you can grow a lot of them from seed that you’ve propagated. And these perennials do grow well from seed. You just have to be patient as it will take a few years to get a big plant that’s going to look nice and full in the landscape.
Getting started is fairly straightforward and begins with choosing the right seeds. Essentially, you’re picking native perennials. The Wild Seed Project in Maine is a nonprofit with plenty of how-to info, as well as packets of seeds. Check there for native seeds that will increase the biodiversity in your yard.
Next, choose a shady spot in your landscape and create a box or cold frame of sorts from wood. Elevate the sides enough so that when you put pots and containers of seeds in the frame, the top of the frame is above the pots and containers, which should be 4 to 6-inch diameter ones. Fill the containers with potting soil amended with compost, then sow seeds like bee balm, asters, rudbeckia, milkweed and Joe Pye weed. And when you’re sowing the seeds, crowd them in so they’re an eighth to a quarter-inch apart. Then cover the seeds over with coarse sand about the same depth as the diameter of those seeds — some will have a very thin layer. Cover the entire frame with quarter-inch mesh hardware cloth to help keep rodents and birds out. Then just leave it. Over the winter, as it rains, snows, freezes over, thaws out and freezes again, that’s what will stratify the seeds so they will germinate in the spring.
Come spring, once the seeds start growing larger and larger, transplant them into a container one size larger. Do not separate them out at this point; leave them all clumped together in their containers. Then put them back in the cold frame to continue growing. You could move some containers with sun-loving seeds like milkweed to a sunnier spot. And then come fall, bring them back to the frame, cover and protect them again. The following spring, you can begin pulling out the now-larger plants, dividing them and planting them where you prefer. It’s an affordable way to get a lot of perennials with a bit of effort and patience. You just have to start sowing the seeds now.
