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I planted wildflower seeds this week. I had piles of small maple leaves . I came up with the idea to put the leaves on the newly planted seeds to keep heavy rains from beating them out of the ground. I plan to let the leaves stay on untill around Febuary. The leaves are six to seven inches deep. After thinking about this I don't know if this was the right thing to do. Someone please advise me.
You did good! It will help protect your seed. Once you remove those lovely leaves, you should already be thinking about composting them, lots of lovely black gold!
Whether you did right, will all depend on your zone really, 6 or 7 inches of leaves is very deep for seeds to germinate. If you dont get really hard winter frosts, then you could have sown them directly into the soil and just covered them with enough soil to cover the seeds, not all, but most wild flowers need some cold weather to give germination at spring time, as the cold soil helps this to happen, some wild flower seeds lay dormant for a few years and then germinate. It might be that when you lift your leaves away, you will also remove a lot of your seeds, buy hey, that is what gardening is all about, you learn by trial and error, you just might have the prettiest garden show in your neighbourhood, now that would be worth the test eh.
Sometimes it is best for wild flowers to just scatter the seeds soon as real cold weather has past, that way, you have less loss of germination as you can actually see the tiny little seedlings as the come through and separate them or care for them better, but you have done the job now, so I think you really just have to wait see the results, if not a good idea, then you know not to try it again, if great germination, then you have achieved what you wanted, that's how all us gardeners learn, remember, if you see nothing by say, April/May, you still have time to resow some more seeds in the same area. good luck and let us know how it went. Best Wishes. WeeNel.
Our weather has been so kinda "off the mark" lately. I'd say you've got a good chance of getting germination. You're south of me, but y'all been getting some really nasty ice storms the last few years.
Thanks everyone for the nice advise. I did plant the seeds in the soil. I put about 1/4 inch soil over them. I think I will feel better about it if I go out and very carefully take four or five inches of leaves off the seeds. I have the idea they will germinate better then. We have been having very hard freezes for around 3/4 of the month in November. The ground is thawed good at around noon. That sounds like it will work out better, don't you think ?
