Persian speedwell - my lawn is buzzing

My lawn is buzzing, but only in the morning.  Then it is silent.

Persian speedwell (Veronica persica) is one of the many flowering weeds that grows in my lawn.  It grows by itself and has lovely blue flowers in Spring.  Honey bees, hover flies, and other insects love the flowers.

Each morning the bees collect pollen and nectar from the flowers.

Persian speedwell has pretty blue flowers

There are so many bees on the Persian speedwell early each morning that my lawn hums.  You can hear the lawn from quite some distance because it is absolutely filled with foraging bees.  While honey bees dominate, there are also some hover flies and a few other little insects collecting nectar and pollen.

Once they have emptied all the flowers they leave and my lawn is silent again.  The following morning new flowers will open and the humming will begin again.

Honey bees and hover flies seem to like the flowers

The Persian speedwell started out as a few small plants in among the lawn a few years ago.  I allowed it to spread, and now it covers a considerable amount of the front lawn and is starting to pop up around the back.

It is usually only there for part of Spring, then it sets seed and dies. 

I took these photos a little while ago, most of my lawn is now brown and dead.  There are still a few patches of Persian speedwell about in sheltered positions.  It will die off soon, then the seeds will be ready in the soil for next spring.

Persian speedwell feeding bees and spreading slowly

I am not sure if Persian speedwell is edible or useful in any way.  I don't really care.  I don't water it, I don't plant it, I don't collect its seed, I don't tend it, it just grows when it is time and feeds bees and other beneficial insects. 

Persian speedwell and other weeds in my spring lawn

Persian speedwell is only low growing, so when I mow the lawn I often only take a little off the top and it is able to flower not too long afterwards.

The main down side to Persian speedwell is that it is only ephemeral and not there for much of the year.

I am glad that there are little flowering weeds like this around, and I am glad that I now live in an area where things like this are able to survive.  I wish I had more little flowering lawn weeds like this.

How I Grow Saffron - it is easy

Saffron (Crocus sativus) has a beautiful flower and a lovely spice that is surprisingly easy to grow.

Saffron is expensive, both the spice as well as the corms are expensive. Saffron is really well suited to growing in the backyard and is really low maintenance. Saffron grows such a pretty flower, the flower smells nice, bees seem to like them, and the spice is lovely and so easy to collect on a small scale.

I am surprised at how few home gardeners grow saffron. More people should grow saffron at home.

I used to be told by home growers that saffron is simple to grow but difficult to get to flower. The high price and the reputation for difficulty getting a crop made me put off growing saffron for years. I eventually paid a lot of money for a handful of tiny corms and discovered that growing saffron was really easy.

I was given good advice by knowledgeable people and did lots of research when I started growing saffron. I find saffron easy to grow and it flowers well for me.

Saffron threads ready for harvesting

Saffron flowers are pretty, smell nice, and produce saffron threads

Saffron only flowers once per year, and each flower only produces 3 threads, so you want your corms to flower each year and you want multiple flowers per corm.

Although I say that each flower produces 3 threads you will notice that some smaller flowers will only produce 2 threads. From what I have seen they only do this when the plant is exhausted after they have already produced a number of flowers. It is like the plant is giving one last push to get out as many flowers as possible but it lacks the energy to make a full sized flower with 3 threads. This is nothing to worry about. An extra 2 threads is better than nothing.

Some of the biggest mistakes people make are not removing competition, and not allowing them to have enough sunlight or decent soil. Competition, either from being planted too close or from other plants nearby will deprive the plants of energy and they won’t flower.

Saffron also needs full sun to flower. If something is shading them they are in the wrong spot and may not flower for you. I grow some in pots and some in the soil, they all flower equally well. Once they have finished flowering you need to leave the plant alone, if you cut the leaves they will not capture enough sunlight to feed the corm and you won’t have flowers next year.

Saffron corms only flower when they are large enough and have enough stored energy, small corms will not flower no matter how well you look after them. Many growers measure the circumference of their corms and consider 7cm to be the minimum circumference they will reliably flower.

My 7cm corms always put out a few flowers, but I get more flowers out of my larger corms. Smaller corms can flower in future years, so look after them well and they should grow fatter and divide and you should have multiple plants flowering next year.

Some saffron grows the flower before the leaves, others grow leaves before the flowers

Saffron is as pretty as ornamental flowers - why isn't it grown more often?

I am told by people with a lot more experience in saffron than I have that in order to initiate flowering saffron needs a hot summer, a cold winter, and for the corms to be planted surprisingly deep.

The cold winter thing makes sense, a lot of flowering bulbs need cold winters in order to flower. The winter here is cold and my saffron always flowers well. I am told that unlike things like tulips that you should not put saffron corms in the fridge. Apparently they need heat while they are dormant. I am not sure if this is true as I have not experimented with it, I store them in the garage where it is hot, or I leave some in the soil over summer where it is also hot/dry, and they flower well for me.

The planting depth is really surprising to me. Normally you only plant corms and bulbs to a depth of two or three times their width, saffron corms need to go a lot deeper! Even though the corms are really small they are meant to flower best when planted 15 to 20 cm deep. I don’t know if this is true or not and I haven’t messed around with this, I plant mine at least 20 cm deep and they reliably flower well.

It seems odd to say that I have not experimented with any of this, but the people who gave me the advice really knew their stuff and through following their advice my saffron has flowered reliably. Most people I know with saffron don't have great success, while I have great success, so I keep doing what I was told would work. If it works then there is no reason for me to mess around with it.

As saffron completes its growing season it tends to divide into new corms. I am told that saffron corms can increase anywhere from 0 to about 15 new corms every year. Higher numbers sound great as it means you would have plenty of new plants, but if they divide into too many then most/all would be too small to flower. It is probably best for them to split into fewer corms and for most of them to flower the following year.

I am told that planting at 10cm results in many tiny corms and no flowers. I haven't played around with this, I plant deep and get a lot of flowers. Perhaps I should plant a couple really shallow next year to build up numbers.

Saffron - I removed the weeds before they grew too big

For some reason, maybe the depth I plant, maybe the cold winters, maybe something else entirely, mine tend to divide into 2 large corms and they both usually flower the following year. I am happy with this as I end up with two corms that are flowering size from each one that I originally planted.

Sometimes I get more and sometimes I get a few smaller ones, but for me they mostly divide into 2 flowering sized corms. This means I essentially double my saffron investment each year.

I don’t have huge amounts of space to grow things, or to be more accurate I grow huge amounts of things. For this reason I sometimes alternate growing saffron and vegetables in the same garden bed, when saffron is dormant I grow vegetables, when they die down I plant saffron.

Saffron is dormant over summer, and it likes to be dry when dormant. If you have wet summers then dig the corms up and put them somewhere safe. I just use a mesh bag in the garage away from direct sunlight. If the soil is pretty dry over summer you can leave them where they are. I dig some and I leave some, it depends if I need that space to grow something else. If you grow them in a pot of soil it is easy to keep them dry over the dormant season.

I am not sure if saffron suffers any pests or diseases, I haven’t had anything bother mine yet. While pests don’t appear to like them, beneficial insects such as honey bees appear to like saffron.

I am told that bees collect nectar as well as pollen from saffron, and I often see honey bees work the flowers early in the morning. I don’t grow much saffron so I am sure it makes very little difference to the bees, but if everyone in my street grew saffron it would make a difference to the local bees.

I grow saffron in several places in the garden, this year I also grew some saffron in a large pot. These corms grew foliage first, then flowered. Just like all the others, each corm produced multiple flowers.

The pot was filled with cheap potting mix in the top and guinea pig manure/straw underneath, these corms grew large, the largest was about 18cm circumference. I wonder how many flowers I will get from a corm this large!

Saffron starting to grow

Saffron flowers - I had already harvested the threads from the open flowers

Saffron plants gathering energy prior to going dormant - I planted 3 and you can see they have already divided

Saffron does not grow from seeds. If someone is selling saffron seeds they are a thief, keep well away from them and don't buy anything they have for sale.

Saffron is a sterile triploid that does not produce seed. Saffron does produce pollen and can (with difficulty) pollinate some of the wild ancestors, but that is a story for another time.

Saffron grows from corms, to get corms you must divide existing corms. Some varieties are evidently more potent or better than others. I am not sure how these varieties arose or what variety I have.

I am told that saffron corms with a circumference of 7cm or larger should flower. In my limited experience this appears to be true. Saffron corms are not perfectly round, they are odd shaped and have rounded parts and flat parts and various bumps, I guess this is why I am told to use circumference rather than diameter. To measure the circumference I wrap a piece of string around the corm and then measure the string.Very simple.

I sell saffron corms in Australia when they are dormant through my for sale page. I don't sell any that are less than 7cm circumference so they should flower for you. I don’t have large numbers and they reproduce slowly for me, so I never offer many for sale. If you are overseas and are sure your country will allow them in then I could also post to you. I can’t guarantee the corms that I sell will flower, but I only sell corms that are large enough to flower and in my garden would produce multiple flowers.

True potato onion seeds Australia

We have so few varieties of potato onion (Allium cepa var. aggregatum) in Australia, they used to be grown in every home garden and now they are increasingly rare. For a few years practically nowhere sold them, I am happy to say that this seems to have passed and a few places now stock potato onions to sell to home gardeners. They only appear to have one or two varieties, but it is a great start!

Potato onions are perennial vegetables that are great for permaculture gardeners and kitchen gardens. They are simple to grow, they reproduce by them selves, they return decent crops, but they are too small for my liking.

Potato onions usually don’t flower and the flowers usually won’t set seed, so there are no serious breeding efforts aimed at increasing their size. To remedy this I needed to make my plants flower and produce seed.

A few years ago my potato onions flowered and set viable seed, not many seeds but a few. It took a bit of work but I got a few seedlings from them. All of these displayed a high amount of genetic diversity and every seedling was unique and distinct from all the others.

Oddly enough my seed grown plants showed an increased propensity to flower and a good number of their seeds were viable. Breeding potato onions then became not only possible but also pretty easy.

Seed grown potato onions from the same batch display a lot of genetic diversity

Then a grower friend of mine generously gave me some potato onion seed that were descended from the rather impressive "Green Mountain" potato onions. I grew these and got some nice seedlings from them.

I allowed all my plants to open pollinate, planted a lot of genetically diverse seed, and culled hard. As I now had flowering potato onions from diverse genetics I was able to select for larger onions of different colours. I quickly made a lot of progress, I selected based on size and colour. What I didn’t do was think this through.

After a while I had large onions that did not multiply and had little storage ability, much like many onion varieties that already exist but with less storage ability. I moved house and lost the majority of these ‘potato onions’.

In hind sight I am glad that I lost them, they grew fast and were very large and looked really impressive, but they were a step backwards.

Some seed grown potato onions - highly variable

I still had some of the parent stock that can set seed, and I still had some of the Green Mountain seed that was getting old and losing viability. So I started again, but this time I am putting more thought into it.

This time I have less space and less time so progress is painfully slow, but I am taking a more strategic approach so should get a better outcome.

I still want larger onions, current potato onions are too small to be worthwhile growing and the larger size is the entire point of growing potato onions from true seed. I also want a few more colours, the current potato onions are lacking in this regard. This time I am also selecting for their ability to divide, and for their storage ability. It is these last two criteria that differentiate a regular onion from a potato onion, losing these traits just makes another variety of regular onion.

The ability to divide is one of the most important traits. The whole point of potato onions is that they are perennial and divide so you never have to bother with saving seed.

All these seeds were planted the same day, some are big and some are tiny

Allium seeds tend to have a short life and viability of seed tends to drop off rapidly after a year. Each year I produce more true potato onion seed than I can sow, and rather than waste this I thought I would offer it for sale in Australia to people who are interested. Who knows, perhaps someone will grow something amazing from this.

I plan to sell mixed true potato onion seed from the original stock as well as from the lines I am trying to develop. Some may contain genetics from the improved Green Mountain onions while some will not. This seed is produced from potato onions that divide in my garden and have reasonable storage.

Some of the parent potato onions

Various potato onions

White potato onions multiplying

This has been open pollinated, so I have no way to know what unique genetic combinations will exist. I only grow perennial onions and it may have crossed with any or none of these. This is open pollinated seed and each seedling will be genetically unique. Any plant that is perennial is a new variety and you will be able to share it around and name it as you wish.

Every seedling will be unique, some will produce large bulbs, others will produce small bulbs, and some may not bulb at all. Some will divide like mad, and others will not. Some may grow top sets but most will not. Most should be perennial but there is a small chance that some may be biennial. There should be a nice range of colours.

Potato onion flowers - should produce a lot of seed this year

Honey bees like potato onion flowers

Being open pollinated means there are no guarantees of anything other than diversity. I only collect seed from plants that have reasonable sized bulbs and divide well. Having a decent plant as the female parent increases the chances of growing something good.

As onion seed generally has a short viability I only sell seed that is less than one year old. My potato onions are flowering right now. If you are interested in true potato onion seed it will be listed on my for sale page when it is available.

Controlling cabbage white butterflies naturally - Pteromalus puparum in Australia

My daughter, much like many kids her age, loves butterflies.  Butterfly kits where they send you a chrysalis to hatch are very expensive.  Native butterflies have a hard enough time as it is so I would prefer my daughter just watch them in the garden and we didn't collect their chrysalis.

My vegetable garden, much like many organic vegetable gardens, has cabbage white butterflies.  There are canola fields less than one kilometer from my house, spilled canola seed on roadsides acts as a breeding ground for these pests, and they flutter over my fence all summer long.  I often collect pupa or caterpillars from plants and feed them to the chickens. 

I have heaps of caterpillars, and my daughter wants butterflies.  Can you guess where this is going…

I collected some cabbage white pupa and put them in a jar for my daughter.  She got to watch a few butterflies emerge.  We also caught a few adult cabbage white butterflies and put them in a little enclosure to watch them flutter around.  It was heaps of fun.

Later in the season when I collect cabbage white caterpillars off my plants I plan to give them to my daughter to grow into butterflies.  She should enjoy that.  Cabbage white butterflies are an introduced pests, so catching these is not a problem.

Everything went well and my daughter was proud of her butterfly farm.  Then something strange happened to one of the pupa.  It turned the wrong shade of brown, a small round hole appeared in its side, and a bunch of tiny pteromalid wasps emerged.  My daughter was horrified and thought they were ants.  The truth was far more horrifying when I explained it to her, they were little parasitoid wasps and had eaten the pupa from the inside. 

Pteromalus puparum photo from - https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/264352-Pteromalus-puparum

These parasitoid wasps presumably mated and laid eggs in the other pupa that were in the jar.  Eventually I had a jar full of tiny parasitoid wasps and dead hollowed out butterfly pupa.  We gladly released these wasps into my vegetable garden.

These wasps appear to be Pteromalus puparum.  They are a pupal endoparasite of several butterflies, they search out pupa and inject venom and eggs into the host.  The number of eggs they lay in a host varies depending on the size of the host.  Once the eggs hatch they eat out the host from the inside, then they pupate and emerge as adults who mate and look for more hosts in which to lay eggs.  They have been used overseas to help control numbers of cabbage white butterflies.

I am unsure when these wasps were introduced into Australia, but I am assuming it was not terribly long ago.  These tiny wasps were once sighted in VIC, WA, and northern QLD.  Many references state it was introduced in Australia but its establishment is uncertain.

Following some incredibly bad advice from Jerry Coleby Williams and Gardening Australia I planted land cress (Barbarea vulgaris) to help control cabbage white butterflies.  It didn't work.  These parasitoid wasps, however, have been proven to reduce the numbers of these butterflies and have been introduced here and several countries in an attempt to combat these pests.

This is incredibly exciting, if these parasitoid wasps can establish a background population in my area they may help to control cabbage white butterflies.  Don’t be fooled, they won’t ever eliminate these pests for me, but they should help to lower their numbers.  Lower numbers of pests means less damage to crops.

I grow everything organically.  If I spray insecticides, even organic insecticides, then these tiny wasps will be the first to die.

What size are skirret roots

Skirret (Sium sisarum) is the best root vegetable I have ever eaten.  Skirret is a perennial vegetable that is well suited to being grown at home, it is one of the best permaculture vegetables, and even though it is more delicious than any other roast vegetable you will likely never see this for sale in the markets. 

I grow skirret in Australia organically and it never has any problems.  I have seen some photos of skirret that is riddled in root knot nematodes, but mine have never shown any signs of this.

It is simple to grow skirret organically, I have written a few blog posts about how I grow skirret to help give people an idea of what to do.  I am suggesting that what I do is prefect, I am merely saying what has worked for me.  You may find better ways to grow skirret.

People often ask me how big skirret roots grow.  Skirret roots seem to grow different sizes depending on the soil, the age of the plant, the weather, how much water they receive, how much sunlight they get, competition etc.

Usually my skirret grows pretty long with a good amount that are fat enough to bother cooking.  The photos below are of my plants grown in NSW.  Skirret roots can grow longer, and they can grow shorter, but these are some that I dug up this past winter for dinner.

Skirret roots - we washed, cut, and roasted these

Skirret roots are not the fattest root vegetable in the world.  They make up for this in how great they taste, how many meals they can be used in, and the sheer number of roots that each plant can produce.

I sell skirret offsets and skirret seed through my for sale page.  I am one of the few people in Australia that sell skirret and other perennial vegetables through the post.

If you do buy from me please note that I am not selling large plants, I sell seed or offsets.  Larger plants tend to suffer transplant shock and need a lot of water and some shade to recover, offsets are usually planted so their leaf tips are just below the soil surface.

While offsets are small they transplant well, they grow fast, they flower and provide seed in autumn, and their sweet white roots are ready to harvest in winter.

Typical skirret offset - note how tiny they are

Skirret plant, this is what a tiny offset grows into in one year

Skirret offsets are around this small, sometimes a bit larger

Buckwheat

I have often considered growing buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), but never got around to it until recently.  I enjoyed growing buckwheat, I saved a little seed, and I plan to grow it again.

Buckwheat seed is eaten by people, animals can eat the leaves, it apparently grows well in soils lacking fertility, people grow it as a cover crop to increase soil organic matter and biological activity, and bee keepers overseas often rave about buckwheat.

This year has been another dry year, so I decided to plant some things to help my bees leading into winter and decided to add buckwheat in the mix.

I know what you are thinking, growing a few square meters of flowers won’t make a lot of difference. That is true, it won’t make a huge amount of difference, but making a little difference may be the difference between starvation and having my hive just making it through. Feeding sugar syrup is good, feeding sugar syrup plus planting extra flowers is better.

Buckwheat starting to flower

There was not much time before frosts came so I needed something that grows fast. I have heard that buckwheat can flower in as little as four weeks. That sounds unrealistically fast, but I thought I would give it a go. I had a few garden beds that would be empty until spring, I planned to dig compost and manures through them in winter, so they were perfect for autumn planted buckwheat. I am told that buckwheat produces large amounts of both nectar and pollen. My bees need both of those. As my hive was pretty close to the buckwheat, and the next nearest hive was about a kilometer away, my bees should collect the vast majority of the resources.

I planted some buckwheat seeds, I wasn’t sure what density would provide the largest nectar yield, perhaps spacing them too close would make them grow slower and have less flowers overall, perhaps planting them close would mean the same number of flowers per plant and more nectar per square meter. I don’t know, so in one bed I planted them thickly, and in the other they were planted further apart.

The more dense planting appeared to provide more flowers overall and oddly enough more flowers per plant.

Buckwheat cotyledons low planting density

Buckwheat cotyledons high planting density

The seeds germinated in a day or two, which was faster than expected, the cotyledons were odd shaped little things. Then they started to grow true leaves, these were heart shaped and look similar to fish mint. At first I stressed that my fish mint somehow invaded these two beds, smelling the leaves quickly dispelled my fears. There was no doubt, this was certainly not fish mint.

I keep hearing how fast buckwheat grows, and how quickly they flower, but mine didn’t look like they had done much after germinating. Two weeks after sowing seeds most plants only had 2 or 3 true leaves and were not very tall. Then I looked closer, even though they only had 2 or 3 true leaves and were only about 2 inches tall they also had flower buds! How can such tiny plants have flower buds forming? How remarkable.

Apparently they begin flowering when still tiny, and continue to flower as they grow. This is perfect for my bees as it means they had extra resources to forage on leading up to winter. Not only will they have extra resources, no one else is growing buckwheat nearby so it increased the diversity in their food.I have no proof of this but I think giving bees diversity in food helps the colony stay strong.

Buckwheat with heart shaped leaves

The frosts killed the plants before they got a chance to set seed much, so this crop was mostly for the bees and as a green manure to feed the soil. Next time I will try to plant earlier so I can also save more seed and will never have to buy seed again.

White flowered buckwheat

Light pink flowered buckwheat

Mixed colour buckwheat flowering

My buckwheat grew a mix of white, pink, and red flowers. Most of the flowers were white, but I prefer the pink and red ones. The pink or red flowered buckwheat tended to have red stems while the white flowered ones had green stems.

I only saved seed from the darker pink to red plants. I would love to stabilise a variety of pink or red flowering buckwheat, but to do that I would prefer to save seed from a lot more plants.

Pink flowered buckwheat producing seed

White flowered buckwheat producing seed

For now I don't sell buckwheat seeds, perhaps one day I will have stabilized a pink flowering buckwheat variety and will sell seeds from them. Or maybe I will sell mixed buckwheat seed that has a high percentage of pink flowering types. If I ever do sell buckwheat seeds they will be listed on my for sale page.

How to Grow Muscari Grape Hyacinth from Seeds

Over the years I have grown a lot of things from seed that I have been told are not possible, or are too difficult, or will have poor results, and are simply not worth my time.  Quite often this advice is given rather aggressively by people who have never attempted this, and never researched this, but are basing their rather strong opinions on - I don’t actually know what.  All I know is that they are usually overly aggressive in their advice and claim that anyone who considers otherwise is foolish.

I often try these things that I have been told not to try by these aggressive naysayers, but keep quiet, at very worst I will learn from the experience.  Usually I collect the seeds from fruit myself so it costs me nothing more than time.  I think spending a little time on a hobby and learning something is well worth the investment.

Sometimes the results are ok, other times they are rather poor, but more often than not my results are spectacular and I wonder why so many people tell me and everyone else not to try.  If our survival depended on crop success I could understand being over cautious and never trying anything new, but crop failure is not life and death here at the moment, so I don’t understand the reason not to be adventurous.

I mostly grow edible things, every now and again I dabble in ornamentals.  One thing that almost no one does anymore is grow flowering bulbs from seed.  Many are surprising easy to grow, while others are far more difficult.  Depending on the type of bulb it can take a few years before they can flower when grown from seed, others flower the year the same year the seed is planted.

One type of flower I have never tried to grow from seed before is muscari (Muscari armeniacum) also known as "grape hyacinth".  They are small, there are a few varieties around to cross, and they occasionally self-seed with no outside help, so this should not be a terribly difficult task. 

Grape hyacinth Muscari armeniacum seedlings

From looking on the internet it appears that very few home growers bother to grow grape hyacinth from seeds, and even less have written instructions on how they did it.  I did some research to try and find the best way to germinate muscari seeds but the advice was not consistent and was rather vague.

I found some vague instructions that said the seeds need cold stratifying, while others that say they do not need stratification but actually need cold germination.

Other than that I have found very little information, so I gave it a go anyway and figured that I would learn from it.  The seeds were from my existing plants, so I had little to lose.

I had a very limited genetic stock to work with the first year, so my crosses will likely end up looking much like the parent stock.  This is ok, this was about learning how to make the cross and germinate the seeds.  After I learn that I can try to get a few different varieties and aim to create something new.

Much like in fruit and vegetable breeding, I removed anthers from flowers before they matured and bagged the flowers from then until seed pods had formed.  This meant that any seed set was a result of my cross pollination attempts.  Collecting pollen was difficult as the flowers are small and the plants are low to the ground, I wiped the tip of my pocket knife across anthers and gently dabbed pollen on the stamens. 

You don't have to do any of this, but I wanted to learn how to cross different varieties in the future.  This year I have just allowed the plants to flower and set seed without intervention from me.  I will collect this seed when it is ripe.

I enjoyed a good success rate and ended up with a decent number of seeds to use. Once the flowers had finished I left the stalks with the seed pods on the plant to dry, then I collected their seeds.

Grape hyacinth seed pods - I had collected seed from all the good looking ones before I thought to take a picture

I was not certain how to germinate the seeds but figured they should go through the fridge.

I put seeds on damp paper in a plastic zip lock bag in the fridge, I had intended to take some seeds out after six weeks to see if they would then germinate in warm soil, but time got away from me.

Two months after being in the fridge the first seed germinated.  I planted that seedling and a few of the other non-germinated seeds in a pot of soil.  Those other seeds I planted never germinated.

Muscari seeds on damp paper towel and put in the fridge until they germinate

Around two and a half months a lot more seeds germinated in the fridge and were planted out, again I also planted out some of the other non-germinated seeds.  Again none of the other seeds have ever germinated.  They either germinate while they are in the fridge or they never germinate.

I left the remainder of the seeds in the fridge and they all germinated around 3 months after they were first put in the fridge.

Muscari seeds germinated and ready for planting

So far seeds have only germinated while they were still in the fridge, none of the seeds that had been in the fridge for a few months and then planted out prior to germinating have done anything.

They may need more time, or they may only germinate while cold, I don’t really know.  What I do know is that I can get most of my muscari grape hyacinth seeds to germinate if I just leave them in the fridge on damp paper and check on them every now and again.  That is pretty simple.

Three months seems like a long time to wait for germination.  Then again, leaving seeds in the fridge for three months and doing nothing works well and is simple enough.

Another batch of seedlings, I should use a larger pot but I ran out of them

From this I have learned to emasculate, pollinate, and bag muscari flowers to achieve high rates of seed set.  I have learned how to collect ripe seed and germinate a large percentage of the seeds.  I count this as a success.

I don’t know the best time to plant seeds, and I don't know anything about muscari genetics, so I still have a lot to learn. The young seedlings are best kept out of hard frost the first year, and they need reasonable watering the first year.  From year two I treat them the same as any flowering bulb.

I had assumed that most blue muscari grape hyacinth bulbs were pretty similar genetically meaning they would be pretty genetically homozygous and the seedlings would all be reasonably similar.  I am happy to say that this does not appear to be the case. 

Even at a few weeks old some seedlings were more robust and producing a thick bulbous base, others were still very spindly and grass like.  Some grew reddish stems while others were green.  Perhaps some of the flowers might look a little different, only time will tell.

Grape hyacinths - normally I wouldn't dig them at this time of year

More muscari bulbs - not great to dig them when actively growing like this

From here I need to find a few different muscari varieties so I can try some interesting crosses, then grow out the crossed seed and wait a few years and see what their flowers look like.  Being so small I should be able to fit a lot of muscari plants into a small amount of space.  They are pretty low maintenance, so the wait should not be unbearable.

It should only be about three years before I get to see the first flowers.  Once they flower I can divide the bulbs of the ones I like best.

If you want to grow grape hyacinth from seed you will either need to collect the seeds yourself, which is simple if you have a plant, or try to buy some seeds.  I can't find anywhere that sells muscari seeds so if you find somewhere even mildly reputable please let me know (not ebay as many ebay seeds are fake and the sellers are thieves).

I sell muscari seeds through my for sale page, they are simple to grow.  Unlike bulbs you get a lot of seeds for very little money, the only down side is they take a few years to flower. 

Until I learn how long grape hyacinth seeds remain viable I will only sell fresh seeds that are less than a year old.  My plants have now finished flowering again and I am waiting for the seed pods to dry a little more before I collect them.

Mentha australis - native river mint

A number of years ago I found a small herb for sale that was labelled as: native river mint - Mentha australis. There are about 25 species and countless interspecific hybrids and varieties of mint (Mentha), only about six species are endemic to Australia.

I had always heard that there were a few species of mint native to the area I lived, I spent much of my life outside in the bush and have looked for them but I had never actually seen one in the wild.

This native river mint plant was small, it had long thin wiry stems, it only had a few leaves and they were all rather small. Overall this plant looked pretty weak. I smelled one of the leaves and it smelled strongly like peppermint. That was enough to make me try growing native river mint.

I bought this plant and excitedly took it home that day. I did some research and it appears to be correctly labelled. Even though I had never seen one in the wild it is indeed one of the species that is, or at least was, native to my area. Who knows, perhaps these are locally extinct in the wild now.

Typical stems of native river mint

From what I read this plant used to be really common and was used as bush tucker or medicine as well as food for the first Europeans. Native river mint is pretty rare in the bush now, it is said to persist as seeds in the soil on ephemeral flood plains where it springs up after rains and may be lucky to flower and drop seed before it is grazed to death. I still hope to see it growing in the wild near a stream one day and I plan to take a small cutting if it is growing where that is allowed.

I grew my plant in a pot sitting in some water, many types of mint have huge weed potential as they spread by underground runners as well as drop masses of incredibly tiny seeds. Mine grew rather well as an emergent water plant with the roots in water and the leaves in the air, it grew far better as a normal terrestrial plant that is never submerged and is just watered infrequently. Like most types of mint, this needs a bit of water to really flourish. Native river mint does spread by runners, and it does set tiny little seeds, but it doesn’t seem to spread very far by itself and doesn’t appear to pose a weed threat. While I don’t have any seedlings from seed fall I assume the seeds are viable. Perhaps it may need a second (genetically different) plant in order to set seed, but I doubt it.

Native river mint is a civilised variety of mint that is simple to contain and if you put in some work can actually be grown in the garden without it taking over. You can’t honestly say that about many varieties of mint!

Native river mint leaves - front and back

Based on what I have seen from growing this for a few years I can say that native river mint always has long thin stems, and always has small leaves, this appears to be its normal growth habit. The small leaves smell and taste very strongly of peppermint, and are simple to strip from the stems for use. My plant always has leaves and does not appear overly bothered by heavy frosts.

I assume it is very healthy to eat but have no evidence of this. My kids enjoy herbal tea made from native river mint and sometimes they mix different herbs together. I grow a lot of different herbs and things so they have plenty of choice.

I have never tried to collect/grow its seed so can’t comment on how easy they germinate or how much diversity they have from seed or even if one plant can set seed without cross pollinating.

Native river mint is native to my area, which means that if its seed ever gets into bush land it will actually be a good thing and it won't be adding to the weed burden in the area.

These grow very easily from cuttings, I take cuttings of this when I remember and they root easily in moist soil or even in a glass of water.

Mentha australis cuttings ready to plant

Native river mint flowers for me each year and feeds several species of native bees and other native insect pollinators. They possibly also feed honey bees but I have yet to see them working its flowers, which means it is not their preferred source of food so the native bees get a greater share of its nectar and pollen resources.

Many of our country’s native bees and other insect pollinators are becoming increasingly rare. I don’t know if this is due to competition by introduced honey bees, or lack of suitable foods due to land being cleared for housing/crops, or lack of appropriate nest sites, or wide scale pesticide use, or any number of factors. Many of the native plants people grow are not native to this area and have larger flowers and are very attractive to honey bees. Growing small flowering native plants such as native river mint provides suitable food for native insects and may give them a competitive advantage over the larger and more aggressive honey bees. By growing organically you are not adding to the pressures these native insects face from wide scale pesticide use.

Perhaps growing small native plants like this organically will help the local ecology in a small way. If enough people in an area grew one or two things like this I think it would make a big difference. Native river mint is a useful edible herb that is easy to grow and doesn’t pose a weed threat, which in itself makes them worth growing. If growing native mint helps the local ecology in some way then that is an added bonus.

Native river mint is simple to grow, is good to eat, is good for the environment, but can be difficult to find for sale because few people know about it. I sell native river mint plants through my for sale page and can post it to much of Australia.