Bells Of Ireland

Precious helping hands. Our sweet little flower child is diligently placing a second round Bells of Ireland seeds on a wet paper towel to be cold stratified. Stardust Farm and Flowers is quite the family business.

Last March was my first time growing Bells of Ireland. I fell in love with it as a cut flower when we used it for our wedding 5.5 years ago.

There are many ways to grow Bells of Ireland. They can be grown as a “Cool Flower” depending on your USDA growing zone planting seeds or seedlings either in early spring or late fall. That’s a story for another post.

Germinating the seed can be tricky, so we’ve been experimenting. Last year for our first try, we placed a handful of seeds on a wet paper towel, placed the paper towel in a baggie, and then into the fridge for a week. After a week, we placed the baggie on a heat mat and checked daily. A couple seeds germinated the next day!

Our second experiment, we did the same thing except we kept the baggie in the fridge for 2 weeks. We’re getting better germination with longer cold stratification.

This year I’d like to try a third experiment by placing the dry seeds in a baggie with a desiccant pack and then into the freezer. After dry cold stratifying, we’ll then sow the seeds into their soil blocks.

By creating these successions of plants, we should be able to stagger bloom periods to have flowers at different stages throughout the growing season.