How to Start Native Wildflowers from Seed (Beginner-Friendly Guide)

Learn how to grow native wildflowers from seed with this beginner-friendly tray method—no fridge or fancy setup needed. Ideal for Florida and Southern gardeners!
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00:00 Starting Native Wildflowers from Seed
01:07 Where do you get Native Seeds?
03:37 Other places to get Native Seeds
04:16 Seed Starting Supplies
06:41 Preparing Your Seed Starting Mix
09:45 Filling Your Seed Trays
12:48 What Wildflowers are we Planting?
19:26 Butterflyweed Seed Starting
22:49 Swamp Milkweed Seed Starting
24:54 Spotted Bee Balm Seed Starting
26:40 Goldenrod Seed Starting
29:02 Rudbeckia Seed Starting
30:38 Rosinweed Seed Starting
33:17 Next Steps

On a scale of 1 to 10, I am at 11 right now because I am so excited today to get this project going. And what are we going to be doing today? Well, today we’re going to be getting flowers started from seed. Actually, we’re not getting flowers started from seed. We’re getting wild flowers started from seed. And specifically, we’re getting native wild flowers started from seed. So, I wanted to start this journey of getting wildflower seeds started that so that I can have more native wild flowersowers and you might be able to start adding these to your garden much more easily. So, if you’re excited to learn about how to start native wildflower seeds and go along this adventure with me starting them for the first time or you actually already have your wildflower seeds and you’re ready to get them started, this is going to be the video for you. And like I was saying, if you have your stuff ready, this video we’re going to do stuff step by step so that you can follow along with me. So, go ahead and get all your seed starting stuff out cuz we’re going to like we’re going to do this together. Other thing is is if you’re interested in a specific plant species, I will put chapters down at the bottom so you can jump ahead so you can get friendly reminders of how I did it and you can do it too. Which brings me to the point of what supplies do we need? Now, we’re going to get to the like not as unique things in a moment. You know, things like watering cans and seed starting trays and seed starting mix. But the big thing you need is you need seeds. But I want to talk you guys through this for a moment because I think this is a thing we really need to kind of make sure everyone’s on the same page of because so it’s great that these companies have these national native seed blends, but when you look at some of the packets of those, they’re native to lots of places that aren’t one single location. And it’s actually a big mislead. I’ve seen wildflower packets that have combinations of native European seeds, African seeds, and American seeds all in one mix. And that I would say is not a native mix. So, just a friendly reminder, when we say native, well, at least in the United States, when we say native, we mean pre-European contact. So, like before the Spanish, the English, and anybody else and their mom got here, like this is the stuff that grew in a location. And then we get to the like how native is it, you know, like like it’s native to the south of the United States. It’s native to the state of Florida. It’s native to the panhandle of Florida. It’s native to my specific county. It’s native to my city. Like, it can get really detailed. So, everything I’m going to be using today is going to be native to the state of Florida. It’s going to be using the specific Florida ecotype. And I think that’s a really important thing to talk about, too, cuz there’s some of these plants that are native that there’s the same plant. It’s the same species, but there’s different ecoypes. And we’ll we’ll dive into deeper because a couple of these ones are there’s some differences that you know it does impact how well they grow. So we’ll talk on those in a minute. But the first piece is is you want to get native wildflower seeds to your state at least or your region depending on how big your region is. But for fidians we’re getting our native seeds. Now where do you get your native seeds? Well, one cool thing is is a lot of the native nurseries in the area they carry native seeds. Actually they carry these type of native seeds. But I know a bunch of you, you’re like, “Man, oh man, Jacqueline, I don’t have a native nursery.” Well, the cool thing is you can order these online. And this is Florida Wildflowers.com. It’s the Florida Wildfl Florida the Florida Wildflower Cooperative that you usually hear me talking about. That’s where all the native nurseries are supplying their native seeds from. So, it’s a whole contingent of people making sure that they’re using specific Florida ecotypes. So, we in Florida can know that this isn’t just the same golden rod that they grow in Canada. This is like our type of golden rod. And not only our species, but our eco types, too. So, step one, you’re going to get your wildflower seeds from a reputable source like Florida wildflowers.com. You can buy them from individual growers. Sometimes that can be really good idea and sometimes that can be really sketchy. One of the other great places to get seeds is the library. There are seed libraries um all throughout Florida. And two, go check out your local Florida Native Plant Society and your Florida Wildflower Foundation. They don’t sell seeds, but when you’re in those groups, there’s a lot of people trading seeds and sending each other seeds. So, sometimes you can go ahead and buy seeds or trade seeds from people in the group. Seeds. All right, so we got our seeds. So, what else do you need? One, get yourself a watering can. For all types of gardening, having a standard watering can. This is just a 2 L one. You can pick them up on Amazon, but Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walmart, all those are good. 2 L is a really good size. The big thing that you want to do and have for your watering can is you do want to have one of these kind of like the holes cuz you don’t want all the water coming out all at once. So, we want something that can gently pour the water out. So, one liter, 2 lers, and a gentle sprinkling. The next thing is seed starting trays. I like this ones. I picked these up from Epic Gardening. It’s the American Tray Company, but you can do any type of tray as long as it one has a hole in the bottom so that the water drains through. Um, and then two, second most preferable thing is to have like these type of slits on the side so that they do a thing called air pruning. So, that would be a good thing to have. You can use other stuff. I’ve seen people use everything from paper and making their own little like biodegradable cups or they just take solo cups and put some holes in them. All of those are options. If you’ve bought flowers or plants from the Home Depot and Lowe’s before and you have extra trays left over, go ahead, reuse those. I did reuse stuff for years. But then eventually I was just like, I do so much seed starting for vegetables. I was just like, well, let me just spend a little bit of money and get myself a, you know, get myself something. So, you can do that. There’s a lot of alternatives, but this is what I use so you can just know. The other thing you want in in addition to trays or cups is you’re going to need a watering tray. This is just to help maintain moisture so you don’t have to run outside and water as often though you can, but this just helps even it out and I like using those. And then the only other thing is we’re going to have some seed starting mix. Seed starting mix I use is I just use the seed starting potting mix that you can pick up at a Home Depot and Lowe’s. You can get any brand that you want, but the key thing you want is it to say seed starting mix. That’s what I want you looking for. Get something on deal. Get Yes. The other thing is you need something to mix your sea starting mix in. So, a bucket, bin, five gallon pot. This is something I picked up from Target a while ago. And a shovel so to help you mix. And you’ll want to fill up your watering can with some water cuz we’re going to put some seeds already mixed in here. And add water. And I think I think that’s about it. So, we ready to get going? Okay. So, here’s my bucket. I have some leftover dry seeds already mixed inside here. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to add today all I’m going to be doing is I’m going to be doing six different species of plants. And we’re going to just start a tray of each. So 1 2 3 4 5 six different species. So I have six little trays. And we’re going to fill this up so we can fill enough. So for six trays, that’s probably going to be about half a bag of this seed starting mix. So I’m just going to take this and I what I do is I just kind of pinch the side so I kind of get an idea of how much is coming out. And I’m going to shake, shake, shake. And that looks pretty good. Trying not to dump everything. And then what all I’m going to do with the rest of this is I’m just going to fold it, fold it, and tilt it down. And I’m going to grab myself a cute little clip. My little these are like chip clips. Mine are Disney themed cuz I like having Disney themed stuff. But it’s just a nice way to help keep your bag closed so that your soil doesn’t go dumping everywhere. So, with this amount of mix, I’m going to tell you it’s probably about a count of four is where we’re going to start for filling this up. So, we go one, two, three, four, and we’re going to lift it up. Shake my little water in there. And now, we’re going to start mixing. Now, the reason we need to make sure we add soil ahead of not soil, water ahead of time before start filling our seed trays is because our soil is hydrophobic. Hydro meaning water, phobic meaning fear. It’s a fear of water. Why is our soil afraid of water? It just means it’s been really dried out. And they do that to make sure mold and stuff doesn’t grow in the bags. But if we don’t add water ahead of time, what will happen is if we fill this tray with dry water and then put water on it, it’s going to move everything around a lot. And if it moves everything around a lot, it’s going to take what are very tiny seeds and shove them way too deep. So, we need to get this rehydrated before we fill it in. And what we’re looking for is we’re looking for what I call the brownie mix. We don’t want mud. We don’t want water that has dirt added to it. We want what will essentially look like a brownie mix. And we’re not quite there yet, though. You can see the soil’s starting to hold together. It’s still pretty loose and dry. So, we’re going to add a little bit more. So, we’re going to count to three. 1 2 3. And if you under add, you can always add more. If you over add, this is the nice part about having a little extra seed mix. You can just add a little bit more soil to get it back on track. All right, I think we’re almost there. It’s giving me brownie mix. Is it giving you guys brownie mix? Look at it. Look at it. All right, first a test to see if we’re close. Does it kind of hold its shape when I put it on a shovel? Yes. Second. Okay. So, this is a little bit wetter than Yeah. No, that’s okay. So, there we go. Does it look kind of like a brownie? Like I smashed a brownie in my hand? That’s good. That’s what you want. So, we’re going to take this. We’re going to just set it over here. And then we’re going to get out our six trays. And we’re going to just fill them all at once. There’s nothing complicated with these filling of trays. Though, there are a couple tips that I’m going to give you. So, one, I always start with a shovel and then I abandon it because I get annoyed by how long it’s taking. So, if you get annoy if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, just use your hands. It will go pretty fast. As you’re pushing it in, you want to kind of spread it. And then just gently, see, I’m just gently tapping it. I’m not smashing it. I’m not trying to show how strong I am. I’m just gently, gently, gently tapping. I’m just tapping, tapping, tapping. Cuz then you see it starts to go down. So, I know to add a little bit more soil. If you see anything like a branch in here, you’ll want to take that out because that’s the key thing about seed starting mix is it doesn’t have any pieces of wood or it’s not supposed to have any pieces of wood in it. And that’s important because giant pieces of wood are not going to let your baby seedling start up easily. And when you see some of these seeds that we’re going to be doing today, you’re going to be like, “Wow, okay, I get it. They’re so tiny.” If you’ve ever done vegetable seed starting, which I have before, those seeds are in general a lot bigger than what you’re going to see with a lot of these native wildflower seeds, because many of them, the way that they move around is through birds eating them or the wind catching them. Sometimes it’s just dropping directly down, but a lot of them it’s wind and birds or some animal, some critter. So that means they had to be pretty tiny, pretty light cuz songbirds aren’t that big. They don’t have that big of a digestion system. And we’ve got some ones in here that it’s things like sparrows. We have some seeds in here that it’s things like sparrows and rens. Pretty small birds. So they need to have small seeds. But this is one of the great things about having wild flowers. One, they’re gorgeous. They’re pretty. Pollinators love them. And also, we’re creating a food source for birds. And a lot of these ones that we’re doing right now are going to be really important because we’re heading into late summer and fall. So, as birds are doing their fall migration down south to here, places like Florida cuz they come to Florida or they’ll come through Florida, we’re going to make sure that they have a lot of food to eat. They eat a lot of insects, which thankfully in Florida I have a lot. You probably have a lot, too. But we also need to get them seeds because seeds is their protein. Well, I guess bugs are too, but it is another source of proteins and fats for them to make their long journeys or to recover from their long journey. So, I am starting these seeds in August. It’s a little later than I might have. I don’t know. It’s my first year trying. So, some of these things I know how to do. And some of these things I’m going to tell you, I’m trying it this way. And it might work, it might not. But at least we all know. So, we got a tap tap tap tap tap. Six trays ready to go. Next up, I’m going to go wash my hands and clean them up. And I’ll be right back. Okay, hands are all washed. And we’re going to go ahead and just put away this stuff out of the way cuz I don’t need it right now. And we’re going to focus now on our seed packets. Which is why you should wash your hands before after you fill your seed starting mix is wash your hands. Because if you’re going to try to save some of these seeds to maybe recede or start them in again in a few months or in a different season, we don’t want to expose them to moisture. And these packets, well, they’re paper packets, I can tell. and they don’t seem to have a laminate on them, which environmentally that’s great, but for seed storage might be a problem for long-term storage. So, I want to do my best to remove dirt and moisture from my hand before I touch these. The ones that you touch that are going to go in the ground, it doesn’t matter if they had soil or water touch them, but any that you’re going to try to put back in the packet, that does matter. Now, you may be wondering, Jacqueline, why can’t I just just throw these out in my soil and let nature do what nature does because these are native wildflower seeds? And you could go ahead and do that. But for me in this suburban urban environment that I live in, uh there’s too much moisture in the yard that if I did that, a lot of weeds, invasive weeds, yep, some category one really bad invasive weeds would take over long before these tiny seedlings would really get a chance to take off. So, I want to get them to take off and then transplant them into an area. That way, I can knock back all the weeds and then let these guys get going. Gals, guys, get going. So, let’s talk about which seeds we’re going to be starting today. So, we’re going to be one doing I feel like a very classic a classic that lots of people like to add to wildflower gardens and that is going to be butterfly weed aka eskelepsius tuborosa. Do we call it anything else on this packet? Nope. So, ecleius tuborosa aka butterfly weed. This is native to I think 40 or 44 of the states in the United States, but it’s also native to Florida. It tends to like it a little drier than this next plant. The next plant is going to be next one is going to be swamp milkweed, aka eskelepsia incarnada. Again, this is a one that’s native to a lot of the United States. I think pretty much east of the Rockies. A lot of states have a swamp milk. But the difference, and this is one of the ones that’s like a difference that makes a difference. If you get the Florida Ecoype versus just whatever’s on the market, whatever’s on the market grows somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s not ours. And what you’ll notice, one of the biggest differences you’ll notice when you look at the seed packets is look at the color of those flowers. Theirs will be some dark pink, pinky, purpley, magenta-ay. And you can see ours are very pale pink. That is a very good indicator. If the picture does not look like a pale pink, it is not the Florida ecoype. And that does make a difference cuz there’s lots of people who will start those seeds and they’re like, “They don’t do so well here. I thought swamp milkweed’s native.” That one’s not. This one is. So, this is why I get our own native ecoype. And it works so well. I have bought native swamp milk so many times. Grow so well in my garden. The butterflies like it. They don’t like it. They love it. So, that’s a really important one. Another one that we’re going to do is a classic of I feel like summer into fall for us in Florida is bomb. So there’s a lot of native bee bombs, but this is spotted bomb. Manarda pontata. It always reminds me of hakuna matata. This is a great one. It has these palish purple. They’re technically bracks. They’re not leaves, but they’re not petals. Whatever. They kind of look like flowers, and it’s the time of year. So I’m going to get some of these ones started. This really brings in the big bumblebees, the carpenter bees, the ones that you hear them from far away going. That’s what I’m starting. Love that one. The other one I’m going to be starting cuz when we talk about fall migration for birds and butterflies, specifically the monarch butterfly, it’s all about the golden rods. There are so many native golden rods. I have grown two or three types in my yard. Not this type, but we’re going to try this type. I don’t know a lot about it. It’s called slim golden rod. So, it’s going to be a surprise how tall it is. It’s going to be a surprise how bushy it gets. As long as it’s not as big as seaside golden rod, which gets like 12 ft tall in my yard and my neighbor’s yard, uh, I think we’ll be in a good spot. So, we’ll be grabbing some sea slim golden rod. Slim golden rod. We’re also going to, of course, add it’s kind of a weird season to do it. It says it blooms in mid to late summer, and we are in mid to late summer. So C3 starting is a bit on the late side, but we’re just going to push it. I I have a um I live in Florida, but I still have sprinklers and stuff running because I live in a neighborhood. So stuff kind of does act a little funky. And one of the things about midsummer is it’s very much the rain season and not the drought season. So it’ll be interesting to see how this plant kind of reacts to having sprinklers. Well, my sprinklers are off right now, but whatever. We’re going to be doing a rudabekia. This one is Rudbecia Mollis, a sand hill blackeyed susan. I’m curious to how well this is going to do because the area I’m going to put in, it’s not necessarily sandy. It’s pretty rich in soil, but we’ll try it. I’m a big fan of orange cone flour. And this is a reason I want to kind of test on starting it because if I can save seeds for my orange cone flour, which is rudekia fulgita, that would be really exciting for me because rudeka foga works so well in my yard. So, I’m curious to try this cone flour and at least get good at starting seeds with the cone flour. And last but not least, this is the one I want to start a lot more of it, but I’m going to do one practice tray first. So, we’ll just do six today. But this is the one I’m telling you, if you want to get into native wild flowers and you don’t want something that gets out of control and you want it to stay a lot of the year and you want something that’s native to your area, which this one’s native range is like the Gulf Coast region of Florida. And there are versions that aren’t necessarily the specific variety that are native all throughout like the south and basically east of the east of the Rockies or east of the Mississippi at least. And that’s going to be our silium starry rosin weed. I love this plant in my yard for years. This is the one that will like bloom almost all year round once it’s established. and I want more. And I won’t get into too much, but the fact that I can just buy seeds and get more of this started is going to be a win. So, these are the six plants that we’re going to be started. There will be, as a reminder, chapters, so if you have a specific plant that you want to jump to, feel free. The techniques will be pretty similar, but if there’s anything specifically different, I’ll kind of talk you through it. Okay, let’s get to seed starting. So, one of the things I learned a long time ago is put everything on the left and then move it to the right once you fill it because I have and you may have the same problem is I put stuff in and then I forget I did and then I double seed a tray. So, that’s one of my quick little techniques. Let’s put those right there. And we’re going to start with butterfly weed. And I’m going to tell you guys, there is something that I’m not going to do that a lot of milkweed seed starters are going to tell you to do. And it’s because we’re Florida and we’re different and our eco types tend to be different. That’s one another thing with our butterfly weed is I think the leaves are a little bit different than what you see out and about. So, we’re going to gently open this packet. I used to be notorious for just ripping everything open, but oh, okay. So, these might not be very good for realing, and that’s okay. I did buy extra butterfly weed packets. So, let’s take a look at how small these seeds are. Now, this is going to be a wind driven seed. So you can see uh our milkw weeds, no matter the type, well a lot of the types are tend to have these flat seeds and they tend to have little wispies on them when you see them in the wild so that the wind can catch them and move them around. And they’re very flat. Let’s see if I can get one out for you so you can just kind of see it. There you go. So they’re kind of very very paper thin flat which means we can’t put them very deep because they’re not going to be able to get up and through the soil. which is why it’s important to use a potting mix and not a potting soil or garden soils cuz those are going to have those chunks of wood in them and that’s just going to so basically what your potting mix has is going to allow them to break through. That’s also why we try to start things in small trays is because potting mix per ounce is going to be a lot more expensive. So, we use that just so we can um you know not use a ton of it. If you were going to use something like a solo cup or you know newspaper thing, what I would say is is that really it’s important for that like top inch to be seed starting mix and everything below it can be things like potting soil. So if you want to stretch your seed starting mix, that would be one of the ways to do it. That’s something I have done historically. So I am just making dimples because these are such tiny seeds. And then I’m going to put Oh, I don’t know what the germination rate is. This isn’t like working with some big seed company, right? These are native growers who are sending in seeds to try to help make this work. So, I’m going to just I’m going to take a little bit more than I probably would. I’m going to put like three or four in a hole just to get them started cuz at the end of the day, I have a lot of seeds and it’s really important to me that these come up. So, I’m just kind of grabbing a handful and I’m just throwing them in. And all I did is I made the little dimples. I’m assuming these are like a quarter inch depth type seed. Whoops. Some of them falling on top. And I’m wondering if it’s like a husk and then there’s a little seed in in inside. I don’t know. So, let’s then just try to cover this up. And it’s just like just the gentlest amount of soil on top cuz these little seeds have got to push up and through. So, we don’t want to have them move a mountain. And that’s it. And so, I got this left. And this is why it’s important to have my hand dry cuz then I can put the rest of these guys back in. And there we’re done with our butterfly weed. And we’re going to move it to this section right here. Also, you’ll want to label. I’m going to have to do that afterwards, but you could use masking tape. You could use popsicle sticks with permanent marker and then stick them in. I will have to do that later because I forgot to grab that stuff. All right. Next up is we’re going to do swap milk. Now, one of you guys is going to ask me, “What about cold stratification?” Everybody says you got to put it in your fridge. It has to do that. This is one of those things that I question. I don’t know 100%. But I’m going to tell you that our invasive species, tropical milkweed, which is from a tropical location, doesn’t go through any cold stratification. So that can’t be true cuz it comes in areas that are definitely not going and having enough chill hours. And I don’t have enough chilled hours and we’ve had Let me make sure there’s no butterfly weed on my hand. Um, we don’t get chill hours where I live, but I do have these plants spread at times. So, I question that and I am not going to cold stratify anything. We’re going to just assume that we’re making the environment like the environment. Oh. Oh, there’s water on the table. Dang it. We’re going to do the same process again. We’re going to just make some tiny dimples. Quarter inch dimples. And when I say tiny dimples, I’m talking about just just like this much of my fingers going in. Okay? So, a little bit of the nail. And I’m just making what I call the dimples. And we’re going to just take two, three seeds. First one, milkweed. So I am not going to do any cold stratifying at all. That could be totally wrong. Feel free if you’ve done native Florida ecotype in you’ve done that successfully here in Florida and you haven’t or have or done both, tell me I’m right or wrong. That’s okay. Just do it nicely cuz I have feelings, too. So, I always put the seeds first and then I cover everything up because again, I’ve also been notorious in the past for being for a little forgetful and then not filling a cell. And then I start wondering, is it the seeds? Was it me or did I just not put any seeds in the in the tray? So, we got that going here. So, then that’s going to be my butterfly weed, swamp milkweed. And we’re going to put that right there. The next one, and this one has definitely spread in my yard before, manarda ponta spotted bomb. These are tiny seeds. They were already running out of the packet before when I was just moving them around the house. So, we are going to get this open. Oh my goodness, they’ve glued this with so much intention, with the strength of a thousand sons. Same idea. We’re going to dimple these. Okay, I want to show you how tiny these manarda seeds are. This is going to look like pepper to you. Look at how tiny these are. Is this not so small? Can you imagine? I mean, but you can see why birds eat it and spread it around. So, we’re going to just just scratch the surface, but we’re going to also put a lot of seeds down. And spotted bee mom. This is one that if you’re into vegetable growing, I totally recommend you put this near your squash plants, your bean plants, cuz it brings in those big bees that are really good at helping increase your harvest. But if you just like big fat bumbly bees that are just making their little sound, this is the one for you. Bees like it, but I feel like the big bees really like it. They’re so happy. If you see big black bees, those are carpenter bees. And this is a great one for that. Butterflies, I feel like not so much. Butterflies, you’re going to get a ton of butterflies, specifically monarchs and um monarchs, queen, and soldier butterflies, but I get a lot of monarchs in my area. I have never gotten a queen or soldier butterfly in my area with my milkweeds. Bees will come to it, too. And some other milkweed bugs and stuff. This one is all about the big bees. The big bees love it. Next up, we’ve got Soladega Sta Slim Golden Rod. That’s going to be our next one. These ones, if I remember right, from years past. Oh, again, the seed packets. No, I’m probably going to lose all these seed packets cuz they got wet. Oh, wow. They just they stripped it. I know what they did to get those seeds. Okay, we’re going to first just make some dimples again. And it’s okay to overseed. You just have to get comfortable with thinning. And thinning is just um killing baby plants. I’m sorry. It’s going to happen. So, what you can see is they just grab the wand. Basically, what happens is this. Once the flowers fall off, you get this fuzz cuz some of these seeds are going to spread by wind and some are going to spread by birds. If you are in to saving native bees, golden rods, my neighbor Cliff has borrowed seeds from me many a times and he will tell you that the bees, he just is amazed. He never used to garden with um non-natives. I’m sorry. He never used to garden with natives. He always did Florida friendlies. And he since I got into native plants, he borrows seeds and cutings from me all the time. And he has been astounded with golden rod about just he’s just like the bees, the bees, the bees. And remember, golden rod is native. Um there are types that go that are native everywhere from Canada to Illinois down to Mississippi all the way down to Florida. I do know that this is an invasive species that was brought over to Europe. So, I have had a European people jump on my videos and say, “You, how can you grow that? That’s that’s invasive. I thought you were into natives.” Remember, native for one location can be invasive for another location. Actually, all invasive plants that are native to somewhere. Uh-oh. Before my golden rod goes and sees on one of my other trays. It’s okay. That’s We’re just going to I’m just kind of swirling this around because I’m assuming that’s how it would have to kind of happen in nature is they would land on the ground and then little critters would walk over them and then it would just kind of get into that top layer. So, we’re going to leave it like that. And that’s our golden rod. That’ll be easy one to remember. Which one’s our golden rod tray? Can you tell? Next up, we’re going to be doing Rudbecia Mllis, aka sand hill blackeyed susan. Now, blackeyed susans, like all rudas, are a cone flower. And what’s great about cone flowers is they are great nectar plants for bees. I always see butterflies on them. Specifically for me, I usually see monarchs and griillaries and maybe some peacock flat butterflies. These are going to be kind of a longer seed because that’s typical of a cone flower. Oh, these aren’t that long compared to my other rudbeckas. I’m going to just get some of this off my hand. So, I’m not going to use all of it, but they’re kind of like a longer, straighter seed. Same idea. We’re going to just make little dimples. Little dimples. Little dimples. And we’re going to sprinkle a lot of seeds in. Some of them are not going to even end up in the dimple and they’re going to just like start on the side of the tray. That’s fine. Look, the idea is to get at the end of the day one plant per cell. That’s my goal. So, if a couple start in weird places, that’s fine. And the nice thing is this company is giving a lot of seeds. I think the way they tend to do it when I looked online is they kind of say like a packet covers 10 square feet. So, it can flower 10 square feet. So, they’re really thinking about you taking this and putting it in an area, not necessarily starting them in trays, which is great if you want to really take an area and make a big wildflower garden, which is great if you really want to take an area and make it a big wildflower garden. This one, this is one I’m excited about. So, star rosinweed, they just call it rosinweed. Silify asteriscus. Um, I was just in North Carolina. I saw that. Oh, no. Oh, we got some wood chunks. We need to get this out because I want so many star rosin weeds. So many rosin weeds. In other places they call other types of psilium. So silium is the genus. Um they call psiliomes cup flowers or compass flowers. So if you’ve ever lived in a different location than Florida and you’ve heard of cup flowers or compass flowers or they could be called rosson weeds also that’s all the same kind of family. Well it’s technically genus not the family if we remember our biology. They’re all kind of in the same grouping. So I’m excited to start a lot of these. I love these. I already have what a few up front in my yard. Let’s look at these seeds. Kind of flat like our milkweeds, right? I’m wondering if this chaff breaks open and then there’s like a proper seed inside. Let’s see. I know it looks like something’s inside this one. Um, birds do eat it. I’m going to take these little chunks out cuz those don’t look like they’re going to seed. I’m going to put a lot more in my hand. These get big in my yard. They tend to get, let’s see, three to five feet tall. They’re pretty tall. They’re They’re desperately in a need of pruning up front for me right now, but I have picked some and then gone ahead and put them in little voses. Totally a thing you could do. And they just they stay around all year. native range. I just checked this the other day for funsy is all the way from the panhandle all the way down to the Everglades on the Gulf Coast. So, it’s definitely a G Coast plant, this specific species. Come on, guys. Go under the soil. These probably could go a little deeper than uh than some of the other ones. We’re just going to knock in. All right, there we go. And that’s start rosami. So, no seeds here. All the seeds over here. here. So, we have butterfly weed, swamp milkweed, bomb, which one was this? Just kidding. That’s golden rod, our cone flour, and then our silhoued. So, the next thing I’m going to be doing is I’m going to add some water to this tray because we want to maintain the moisture level. I don’t want this to get to mud. So, I’m just going to add just a little bit of water. And I’m going to keep my tray kind of this way because there’s a slight slope to my patio. So, the water’s going to run this way. So, what we’re going to do is we’re just going to add Oh, here. Let me show you a little closer. So, I’m just gonna go ahead and add one, two, three, and let it dribble dribble. I don’t need a ton of water in here cuz we just moistened up the soil, but it’s just going to help maintain moisture. And I’m going to just leave it here. Now, one of my tips for seed starting is wherever you’re going to do the seeds, it doesn’t matter how shady or sunny a spot is. One of the biggest and most important things on that first week, two weeks of you waiting for your seeds to sprout is having in a location where you can see it a lot because when it comes to these itty bitty tiny baby seedlings, they can get stuff can go so wrong so fast. So, I like keeping them on my seed starting bench, my little gardening bench here in the beginning. And what’s nice is is that this is my back patio. So, I walk out here multiple times a day letting the dogs out to go to the bathroom. So, it’s easy for me just to come over and be like, “Did you do anything yet? Did you do anything yet?” Because that’s what I do. You can even see I have some seeds started up here for vegetables. And this just lets me keep a closer eye on them. And then I can start making choices about where I’m going to move them. Now, as I said, this is my first time starting these seeds. So, I don’t have all the tips and I would love to hear from you guys. What are all your tips? If you’ve had any success with seed starting, whether it’s directly into the ground, in a garden bed, or in seed trays, put it down below so that not only I can have some more success, but all the rest of our community can have more success, too. And if this has got you excited about native plants and you want to know kind of the easiest beginner friendly plants that you could buy at a native nursery and then transplant, go ahead and check out this video right here. And if you need help with keeping on track of what to plant, when to plant it, and track your results, go ahead and pick up the Wild Fidian Garden Planner right here. Okay, I’ll see you soon. Bye.