Wallflowers and what else?

Is it to late to plant Wallflower seeds in August, are there any other flower seeds for Winter or Spring one can plant?

 

I always plant my Forget-Me- Not seeds next month and I buy my Wallflowers as plants next month as well

 

Hi BML,

Yes it's too late to sow wallflowers now mine are aprox 6" high and ready to go into the ground just as soon as i can find a space. You can do as nathan does and buy them from next month.

 

I think you are too late to sow Wallflowers, and most other plants, BML>
The only seeds you could plant now are the ones that want a winter before they will germinate - but I don't think that is what you were looking for.

 

U can sow spring cabbage seeds under cover for planting out in October. My Wall flowers will have the tips pinched out after a week in the permanant beds, next job for me is planting 8kg of mixed Daffs

 

As I left it to late to plant any Wallflower seeds so I thought that I would buy some and I made what appears to be a mistake by buying some from the Web.
When the Wallflower and Pansy plugs arived I discovered that they were only about two inches high so my question is, "will they ever grow into viable plants?"

By the way, while down in Somerset I bought some Wallflower plants that were a very healthy ten inches to a foot high at £1.10 a dozen and they are looking good but the question remains, what will happen to the plugs?

 

That a good price BML for healthy Wallflower plants at this time of year. You have to search around - there is a huge variation in value for money. I recently bought some huge healthy plants in the market for 25p per plant. I later went to a garden centre where they were selling a bunch of ten plants for £3.95 - but their bunch of 10 was no bigger than one of my single plants.

Your wall flower plugs will continue to grow quite happily. And may well flower a bit, somewhat late next year. But if they don't flower they should continue to grow and be very good plants in the following year. Wallflowers are often regarded as biennial, but really they are short lived perennials. Christopher Lloyd (Great Dixter) used to say that many biennials can live longer if you don't let them go to seed. And if they haven't flowered they can't go to seed.

 

Why do suppliers fob people off with Plug Plants late in the season?

I ordered some plug plants of Spring Sprouting Broccoli from Marshalls (who are not some fly-by-night company) last September - I don't remember the exact date, but whatever it was it was too late for me to sow my own. They arrived about 5 weeks later, which was as good as useless, and I could have raised small plants like that myself in that time. Needless to say they didn't do anything this Spring, but they are now massive plants - nearly 5' tall - and are probably going to do a grand job next Spring - but I've had to plant my own as well, as I have been expecting Marshall's plants to bolt ...