I had this question sent to me the other day, after I wrote about 'a blue river' in our long border, made up of forget-me-nots.
Q: I drive by your garden every couple of days to see what is in bloom and how the garden changes over time. Several weeks ago the garden was blue with Forget-me-nots. It was beautiful. I then read in your wonderful blog that when the blooms are done and the seeds are set you pull them up and shake out the seeds for a river of blue the following year. Does this mean that you don’t cultivate the earth at all? If yes, how do you control the weeds? And can you add compost to the garden on top of the seeds? Thanks for your help!'
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A little background: Forget-me-nots are biennials. Biennials have a two year cycle of growth (an annual lasts one year and a perennial, more than two) forming a rosette of leaves at ground level as well as a good root system in the first year, followed, in the case of Forget-me-nots, by flower stalks covered in tiny blooms in the second, with the basal rosette decreasing as that second year passes. The plant is working hard early in the second season, so the rosette diminishes as it sends energy to making flowers and finally, seeds, often in early summer. At the end of year two in the garden, a biennial will have disappeared, leaving only seed behind. Have you ever bought a gorgeous foxglove which you carefully planted and tended in the summer? And then after the winter, no foxglove! That is because you were seduced into buying the plant in bloom without realizing it is a biennial, so you will not have another flower for two years, and only if you let the plant go to seed. ...Trust me...I know from first-hand experience...!
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A: Now, to answer the questions. The first thing to say is that Forget-me-nots aren't given their name for nothing! They are hard to get rid of! When their seeds are ready, you will see them sticking to your clothes - the little green calyx protecting the tiny black seed acts like a piece of Velcro so their progeny can be distributed far and wide. A good shake of the almost spent flower stalks in the garden will yield a bunch of seeds. This is when I scatter them where I want them to show up, being very careful not to let them fall into the grass or between pavers if that is not what I want. Just make sure you let those seeds mature before removing them…the seeds will have turned black and will be readily falling out of the calyx.
If you cultivate in the border after the seeds have fallen, you will dislodge the seed so that some are buried deeper than others, but, somehow, a lot of them turn up at the right level in the soil, and they grow on to be healthy plants. You can always transplant plants in the fall into places where they have not grown, either because of enthusiastic weeding (most gardeners are tidier than I am!) or having too much compost burying the small plant.
During the spring and summer, you will find little plants popping out of the ground wherever they have landed. Often they collect around the crown of plants. If you continue to cultivate the soil, you will kill some of the young plants along with the weeds you want to remove, but many will settle back into the soil and be just fine. Emerging plants vary in size and maturity vastly at this stage, so you will have everything from tiny plants to large rosettes to plants with fading flowers. Yes, cultivating and adding manure will set some of them back a little, but they are tough and you always are dealing with thousands of them. So, trust me, you will be able to have your blue river along with not too many weeds both at the same time!
Small seedlings early in spring, year 1, from last year’s seed.
Rosettes of leaves forming late spring, year 1 (plant shown next to the shiny European ginger).
Very late spring year 2. No rosette of leaves at base, only flower stems which will continue to brown and die back, leaving only seeds to germinate going forward.