{"id":106588,"date":"2025-07-10T10:25:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T14:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=106588"},"modified":"2025-07-10T10:25:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T14:25:23","slug":"time-to-sow-biennials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=106588","title":{"rendered":"time to sow biennials"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Angelica sylvestris ‘Ebony’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Just one seed of this angelica germinated out of a packet sown February 2024, and to be honest, one angelica is all I have room for, but a couple of backups for insurance would have taken off the pressure of losing it. I’ve read angelica seed needs to be sown as fresh as possible, so I should have sown it when purchased June 2023. After this bloom goes to seed, I’ll get a bunch more plants started by fall, hopefully, from its very fresh seed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s a big biennial, easily 3′ across. What a looker! Snails weren’t interested, so it’s been a flawless study of finely cut compound leaves in moody purple. And enthralling to watch the flower sheath swell taut, growing as big as a fist the past several days until the crown of the lacy umbel broke through this morning. The ultimate height has been estimated to be as much as 6 feet. The flower will be lighter in color than the leaves. For a dark purple flower, Angelica gigas is what you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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spreading its wings in late spring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Biennials are a little tricky as far as timing, and unless they reseed for you, they can be one-off novelties. So remembering to sow biennials for next year now, in early summer, is the tricky part. Hesperis, lunaria, and Digitalis ferruginea are already established reseeders. I’m about to send off a seed order for a few more biennials including Verbascum phlomoides ‘Spica’ and some selections of Dianthus barbatus like ‘Sooty.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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engulfed by July but holding its own<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I love the seed selection at Chilterns Seeds in the UK, which works if you obtain a Permit to Import Plants and Plant Products from the Dept. of Agriculture. My permit was issued in 2022 and is good until October 2025. Like everything else now, there’s uncertainty whether this permit will be honored and how easy it will be to obtain a new one. Getting this one online was a breeze, a matter of a few weeks until issuance — the old Talking Heads song “Don’t Worry About the Govt” comes to mind a lot these days (“Some civil servants are just like my loved ones…”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few more early July happenings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Persicaria polymorpha makes a good backdrop for Lobelia tupa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Phlomis x margaritae may bloom next year, but if not, that’s okay too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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wonderful leaves<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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another complicated emergence of a flower with Centaurea macrocephala aka basket flower<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dahlia ‘AC Rosebud’ has topped the fence again and mingles with Sanguisorba ‘Red Thunder,’ also a 6-footer.
It was an alternate from a local dahlia grower, but I keep it because it’s sturdy enough to deal with the fierce daily wind! Only just in the past few days of early July have the roaring afternoon winds failed to appear, and it was bliss working in the garden all day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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stock tank lily<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More soon, AGO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just one seed of this angelica germinated out of a packet sown February 2024, and to be honest, one angelica is all I have room for, but a couple of backups for insurance would have taken off the pressure of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2281,5119,36,445],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-rJa","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106588"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106588"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106644,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106588\/revisions\/106644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}