Blanket Flower Seed Saving

I've got dried flowers on my plant now - will the seeds that I harvest from it now be viable?

BUMP!!! BUMP!!! Someone please answer this,I would like to know too..

I would answer but just to make sure i know blanket flower as Gaillardia not the plant in the picture.
If its Gaillardia then dried seed pods should be ok. Seeds are small.
Is that a rudbeckia teddy in the picture? I have something simliar but can't remember what i planted.

Mine is Blanket Flower 'Sundance Bicolor" http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/58768/ - that's what in the photo

Hiya yep,
You are right i'd labelled my pic wrong. SORRY.
I'll be right back with the real answer.
Mike

Got the info now.
To save seeds collect ripe flower heads and dry for a few days. The seeds are produced in apery cases, are fairly large and easy to handle. Sow the seeds at 15oC and should germinate in 10 days.

So the answer is it should be ok.

Mike

Thanks so much Mike! Michelle

Hi not a problem. I'll be saving seed from these in a week or 2 so if you don't have any luck let me know and i'll send you some if mine work.
Have fun
Mike

Hi there. I have some gailladia 'grandiflora and 'Goblin. There's still blooms on the plant as well as I'm sure when I got out later some without petals to deadhead. What exactly would I be wanting toake? With or without petals???? Can someone help me?

Ripe flower heads are without petals and have changed colour and you chould notice the seed parts start to swell.

Okay thanks. So the brownish ones I have n't deadheaded yet are the ones with the seeds. Thanks for the info.

thats the boys.

the boys???????

The flowers are to big and bright to be girls!

I'm confused hilarity or am I just being slow and dumb?

Sorry think its my funny english humour. Ignore the "thats the boys comments down"
Mike

Too early in the morning. I've only had one pot of coffee in me, Please forgive me.

Ecuse my stupidity but United Kingdom - England?

Yeah Uk is England.

Mmmm cafeine

Now to show off how really dense I can be............How do you rate zone 8b when I'm further south on the globe and I'm only a 5a Thats not fair.

To be honest i have no idea. I never have understood this zone thing as in England we don't use them. We know how cold it is. There is local stuff like one side of the country gets really wet and the north is really wet and cold the south is wet and warm the east is dry and cold and the south west is on the gulf stream so can grow palms etc.
I got the info from this web site to check my zone but ill look again.

Hi yeah check this site http://www.tropenland.at/trp/cont/exotenKlima/usda-zone/usda-zonen-karte-europa.asp

Must be the gulf stream thing.

Really doesn't matter..........I would give an arm and a leg for zone 8 anything. There's so many plants that I would love to have that cannot survive our winters. You can have pretty much anything and I'm jealous.

Its a matter of your view point. I look at people in tropical areas and wish i could grow stuff like them.
How cold does it get where you are?

We can get wind chills to -20+. You must have wonderful weather and a long growing season? What is like in you part of the UK? I would love to see England, Scotland and Ireland. I'll probably never get to but I can dream.

Ill try and Take some pics some time.
Everything is really green here at the moment lots and lots of rain.
I have a pic from early this year.
You can get the tropical look without having the climate though. Plants like
Paulownia, Fatsia, Ricinus, Ligularia and Rheum should be hardy enough to give the large leaves for a tropical look. Add a few sedges and maybe stipa gigantea and miscanthus floridulus. Then finish the effect with some real bright colour from unusual bedding varities. Like the celosias and Amaranthus.
Well thats my key to a tropical garden when its freezing outside.
Have fun
Mike

Mike those are really pretty.

xMike those are beautiful. We've been having a lot of rain the past couple days ourselves. The lawn actually is greening up again. We're under water restrictions here and the lawn doesn't get any watering because all my beds do. I have 13 of them and with the work I did to put them in I watered. Too bad for their resrictions.

Im looking into storing waste water from things like the bath and shower for next summer. If we have hosepipe bans i really will cry if my plants die!
Yeah and i'm a fully grown man.

Wow, that is a really cool flower that you just posted Mike, what is it? When my sister in law visited England last year, I asked her to find a cottage garden magazine for me to subscribe to, she didn't find any, are there any good English cottage garden magazines that you know of? Thanks.

Yes that is a really neat picture. I just saw the sun peek out for about 5 minutes. First I've seen since Wed afternoon. All the rain we just got probable has the weeds in outrageous numbers. If my plants I intentionally put in there would grow as fast as the weeds do they would look5 growing seasons old instead of the first year that they are.

Hey Mike is that flower suitable in zone 5????Probably not huh.

Hiya,
The picture is off the seed head of Allium christophii. The Flowers are great to. I grow hundreds there my favourite flower. I would have thought they would be ok in zone5 its really only an onion so should grow most places. They spend most f the year dormant.

Have fun
Mike