Gadenin日本語Get the appSeed is the only route
This is an annual with hollow brittle stems and a taproot, and neither of those propagates. Cuttings collapse before they root, division kills the plant, and layering has nothing to layer. Every nemophila plant that has ever existed came from a seed, and the entire skill of propagating it is in collecting, storing and sowing that seed at the right time. That makes it simple, but it also means there is no way to keep an individual plant you particularly liked.
It also means that seed collected from your own patch is the closest thing to continuity you can have. Nemophila is largely insect pollinated and a patch of one kind grown on its own comes true enough for garden purposes. Collect from the plants that stood up best and flowered longest rather than taking a handful from wherever is convenient, and the patch improves slightly year on year for your particular conditions.
Collecting seed before it throws itself
After the petals drop, a small round capsule swells at the base of the flower. It ripens from green through to a papery straw brown, and then it splits and drops the seed on the ground. The window between ripe and shed is short, often only a few days in warm weather, and this is why gardeners who mean to save seed so often end up with none. Start checking capsules about three weeks after the peak of flowering.
The reliable method is to take whole stems rather than picking capsules one at a time. Cut the stems when the earliest capsules on them have gone brown, put them head down in a paper bag, and hang the bag somewhere dry and airy for two weeks. The remaining capsules finish ripening on the cut stem and shed into the bag. Shake the bag out, tip the contents onto a sheet of paper, pick out the stem and capsule debris, and store the clean seed in a paper envelope somewhere cool and dry.
- Mark the plants you want seed from Push a labeled stick in beside the two or three best plants while they are still in flower. Once the patch browns off they all look the same.
- Check capsules three weeks after peak flower Squeeze one between finger and thumb. Green and soft is too early; papery and brittle with hard dark seed inside is ready.
- Cut whole stems into a paper bag Take the stem when the first capsules on it have browned. Never use a plastic bag; the stems sweat and the seed molds within days.
- Dry for two weeks, then clean Hang the bag in a dry airy place, then shake out and separate the seed from the chaff on a sheet of paper.
- Store cool, dry and labeled A paper envelope in a sealed tin somewhere cool. Write the plant, the year and where the patch was; germination falls off noticeably after the first year.
Do not store nemophila seed in an airtight plastic container unless it is completely dry. Any residual moisture in the capsule debris will mold the whole batch.
Self sowing, and how much to allow
Left alone, a happy patch sows itself and comes back in the same corner year after year. The seedlings that appear from self sown seed are often better than anything you sow deliberately, because they germinate at the moment the ground conditions suit them rather than at the moment you were free to do it. In a gravel path, a wall base, or the front of an informal border, this is exactly what you want and the correct action is to do nothing.
It is not invasive and it does not run at the root, so the only management needed is deciding where you will accept seedlings. If you want it to sow itself, leave the plants standing until they are crisp and brown, then shake them over the area before pulling them out. If you do not, pull the plants as soon as the flowers finish and before the capsules brown, and hoe off any seedlings that appear in autumn or early spring. One season of pulling before seed set is usually enough to end it.
| Aim | What to do with spent plants | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Same drift again next year | Leave until crisp, shake over the area, then pull | Dense self sown patch, usually earlier than a sown one |
| A lighter scatter | Pull half the plants at the end of flowering | Thin natural drift, easy to weed around |
| Move the patch elsewhere | Cut stems into a bag, sow the seed where you want it | Full control, but needs a deliberate sowing |
| No seedlings at all | Pull as soon as flowers finish, before capsules brown | Ends it in one season |
Sowing your own seed back
Home saved seed is best sown the same season it was collected, either in autumn where winters are mild or the following late winter where they are not. Germination is good in the first year and drops noticeably by the second, so sow generously from older packets and thin harder afterwards rather than assuming it will all come up. There is no dormancy to break and no treatment needed: clean dry seed sown into cool moist soil germinates within a fortnight.
Sow it exactly as you would bought seed, direct and where it is to flower, because home saved seed transplants no better than any other. The one advantage you have is quantity, which makes it worth sowing a test patch a few weeks earlier than you would normally dare. That test tells you more about your own garden than any recommended sowing date, and it costs nothing but a pinch of seed you grew yourself.
The seed notes worth keeping
Write down the year the seed was collected, which plants it came from and where they were standing. Nemophila seed loses viability quickly, and an unlabelled envelope found in a drawer two years later is not worth sowing thickly on hope. Recording the position matters as well, because seed from the plants in the best corner of your garden is the seed worth keeping.
Note the date the capsules browned and the date you cut the stems. Those two dates repeat closely from year to year, and once you have them written down you stop missing the window and finding the seed already on the ground.