Plant of the Week: Coreopsis grandflora

Over the next month or so I want to show you some flowers that you can start growing inside now (from seed) so that they will all be ready to plant out once spring hits.  I have chosen Coreopsis for plant of the week due to the fact that is a really easy flower to grow for the beginner gardener (from seed), they produce masses of flowers all through summer (good to cut for the vase and mass of colour in your garden) and are easy to look after (not a fussy plant, will grow well in almost all soil types and will forgive you if you forget to water it).   

The flowers look like daisies and are often bright yellow with the foliage being a dark green.  Coreopsis is often talked about with the common name Tickseed.  I would recommend the Coreopsis grandlflora and in particular ‘Early Sunrise’ as seen in the photo.  You can get seeds for this variety from Kings Seeds https://secure.zeald.com/kingseeds/results.html?q=Coreopsis.

I really get a kick out of seeing the whole process from growing from seed to picking the flowers.  So Coreopsis seeds from Kings will be on my shopping list this year.

Last week’s plant of the week was Whau (Entelia arborescens), and I said I was on the hunt for some of the seedpods so I could try and grow them from seed.  Well, while walking around the Zoo with the kids yesterday I picked a dried seedpod off the ground under a Whau tree.   

Once I pulled the prickly pod apart I got over 30 seeds (along with a baby cockroach).  So tomorrow I’m going to plant 10 of the seeds.  So stay tuned for my success/failure rates.