How I Encourage Seedlings in My Garden

A reader asked in a comment on my post about free plants how I get plants to self-sow in my garden.

I came up with several reasons why I think I’ve been successful in getting some flowers to self-sow in my garden. They are…

Garden fairies.

Garden fairies.

Garden fairies.

My apologies! I don’t know how garden fairies just now took over the keyboard but I am back in control again.

I thought of four reasons why I often have annuals and some perennials self-sow in my gardens.

Use Mulch Sparingly

I don’t put that much mulch on my garden. And by mulch I mean shredded bark you can buy in bags or in bulk. Every few years, I might add some mulch, especially after edging borders and flower beds. But even then I usually just put mulch along the edge where people can see it. Mostly, I don’t worry about covering all the soil with a layer of mulch.

Leave the Leaves

I leave the leaves in the flower beds and borders where they land to break down in place and enrich the soil. In doing so, I’m also creating a good bed for seeds to germinate in.

I realize this is not a practical idea for some leaves, like oak leaves, that are slow to break down and can smother anything that tries to come up through them. But that can also be good if you don’t want a lot of self-sowing plants.

I mostly have maple and honeylocust trees in the back, with an oak tree in front. In late fall, I add the bag to my mulching mower and pick up leaves on the lawn to add to the beds in the Vegetable Garden Cathedral. I leave the rest of the leaves to decompose where they fall.

Choose Flowers That Will Self-Sow

I choose flowers and herbs that will likely self-sow and plant accordingly. This includes perennials like asters, columbine, and straw foxglove, and annuals like nicotiana, dill, and borage.

Lightly Deadhead and Help the Seeds Spread

I don’t deadhead plants that I would like to have self-sow, like columbine, some asters, and violas, of course. Sometimes when the columbine seedheads have dried out, I’ll even collect the seeds and then fling them around the flower beds. Or I shake them out of the seedheads all over the place.

But because I’m trying to create a garden where flowers do self-sow, I always deadhead those plants that I don’t want to come up from seeds, especially cup flower (Silphium perfoliatum) and blue dogbane (Amsonia sp.). They are both prairie plants with deep roots, making even small seedlings hard to pull out without digging them out.

The Downside of a Garden That’s Good for Self-Sowing Flowers

When conditions are good for self-sowing, you will get weeds, so you learn to quickly get after weed seedlings before they take over. You also learn that not every desired seedling is in the right place, so occasionally you have to move them around or pull them out and compost them. You must get over the notion that pulling and tossing out an aster that is clearly in a bad spot is wasteful. After all, one of the definitions of a weed is “a plant in the wrong place.”

The Rewards of Self-Sowing Flowers

My reward for cultivating a garden that encourages self-sowing, has been lots of lovely surprises, like the little pink impatien that showed up under an oakleaf hydrangea by the patio, pictured above. (And if you look closely at that picture, you’ll see an oak tree seedling from the oak tree in front, no doubt, and some oxalis coming up. I need to weed those out.)

And this petunia just now blooming in the patio.

Yes, I see those little weeds growing around it that I also need to pull out. But isn’t that a lovely petunia?

And in a little pot of a variegated houseplant (Hemizygia ‘Candy Kisses’), there’s a little viola seedling.

I plan to leave that seedling even when I bring that plant inside later this summer. We’ll see what happens with it! (I never weed out viola seedlings!)

Self-Sowing Flowers Aren’t For Everyone

I realize that a garden with good conditions for self-sowing isn’t for everyone, especially if you like things neat and tidy or clipped and mulched with plants that don’t touch one another. If that is you, then yes, you should mulch, deadhead often, and don’t choose flowers that might self-sow.

But the rest of us can be a little lazy and a little less controlling in our gardens and plant all those lovely flowers that like to self-sow.

Do you have other ideas to encourage self-sowing? Leave a comment if you do!

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