Dear Reader,
Happy new year and welcome to 2025!
January is the season for garden dreams. In the morning I sit by the fire with my coffee, surrounded by spreadsheets, books and plans for spring. Outside the snow is falling, covering the landscape white. There is an almost imperceptible shift of light, one extra minute of sunshine added each day.
Native seeds also need to spend their winter dreaming of spring. However, they do not need a cup of coffee by the fire, they need to be cold and wet for a few months. I am glad I am not a native seed! Because these seeds need a period of cold, wet conditions, their gardening season starts earlier than the usual flowers and vegetables you might be used to growing. Now is the time to plant your native seeds.
Each year I experiment with different ways of germinating native plant seeds. This year I am experimenting with seed balls. A seed ball is a mixture of clay, compost, seeds and water. The clay ball provides a bit of protection and makes it easy to plant the seeds, and the compost provides nutrients. In the fall or winter you just set the ball on top of the soil where you want your plants to grow. In the spring the rain will melt the seed ball and the seeds will germinate.
Seed balls may sound like a foolproof way to grow native plants but there are a lot of ways you can go wrong. I’ve tried to address these problems by making small seed balls and keeping the seeds on the surface of the ball. I’ve made sure that the seed balls have good contact with the soil and are not buried. Seed balls are typically dried, but I am setting moist seed balls out in the winter so that the seeds will have the cold, moist conditions they need to germinate in the spring. Stay tuned to find out if it works!
If you haven’t sown your native seeds yet there is still time. We have over thirty species of locally sourced, genetically diverse native seeds that are dreaming of a home in your garden.
Happy garden dreams!
Andrea D’Silva – owner
Swallowtail Native Plants
Seedy Saturday Events
Come join us at the following Seedy Saturdays!
10 am to 3 pm Hamilton Public Library, 55 York Blvd, Hamilton, ON
10 am to 2 pm Innisfil ideaLAB and Library, 967 Innisfil Beach Rd, Innisfil, ON
