Hello fellow gardeners,
I have 6 Dianthus "Spooky" plants in my garden. I was deadheading a few days ago and tons of tiny seeds spilled out of the dead flowerheads. I am letting them dry right now. I don't know if these flowers are a hybrid or what that means about their seeds. This is my first year gardening so I don't fully understand why some hybrids are sterile. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Brittany
According to the DL plant file (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/85033/), they will "not come true" from seed. So you'll probably get some boring old kind.
That is an amazing plant, however!
I saved spooky seeds last year and they did great. Only problem they crossed with some other dianthus.
This is the one I saved seed from
This is what all my seedlings looked like.
I discovered by looking at some of my photos they crossed with these
Thank you gardengus for posting those photos. I don't have any other types of dianthus in my garden, so I know they haven't crossed with anything. I want to plant all of the seeds I collected, but I can't seem to find out when to plant them. I'm thinking about starting them indoors. When/how did you plant yours?
I use the winter sow method for most of the seeds some of these just came up in the pot where the original plant was planted.
There is a whole forum on winter sow if you are not familiar with that method.
I'll go check that forum out. I'm still pretty new to the site and haven't meandered that way yet. Thank you for the info.
-Brittany
This year I started two varieties of dianthus from seed I purchased--one was listed as a perennial and the other as an annual. If I try to save seed, will the annual & perennial varieties cross with each other? I need to go back to the seed catalog & see if either of them was a hybrid, too.
Goldberry. I just had to tell ya, I love that plant!
Thank you sandy! :-)
Just found this thread and wondered have the Spooky seeds been a success? I just bought some on ebay, have no idea cross-polinated or not but very curious to see what happens.
Has anyone found a definitive answer to this? There's nothing more frustrating to grow seeds, wait for a year for blooms, and then find out that you got someting else entirely than what you were expecting! It's happened to me with Dianthus seeds I received in a trade. So, I'm wondering if Spooky seeds ever come "true."
