How long did you wait for germination to take place? Datura species seed germinates over a period of time with some seeds taking over a month to germinate. Several species may need to have their seeds treated with gibberellic acid before they germinate easily.

What Datura are you tryig to grow?

Are you stsrting seeds or cuttings? Cuttings start in plain water in a few weeks. Change the water every few days and when the roots are over an inch long pot up in potting mix. Al

calistoga: My experience has been that datura rarely make cuttings. Now their close cousin's, brugmanisa, do propagate well from cuttings. In fact, cuttings are the only way to get true daughter plants from most cultivars.

rsieminski: Here's how I do it. I've grown Datura metel and innoxia. Both the purple and yellow varaties of the metel. I soak my seeds overnight to juice them up good. Using jiffy pellets (I like them better than potting soil for seeds.) I'll plant two or three seeds in each. I have the jiffy pellets in one of thier trays that has a clear humidity dome. I set that on a heat source of some kind. (Grower's mat, waterbed heater, heating pad, whatever) There is a 2'x4' flourescent light fixture suspended right above the trays with a timer set to give roughly spring time lighting conditions. I usually get 75-90% germination in two to three weeks.

I'll leave them in the tray until they get two or three inches tall. At that time I pick the seedlings out and pot them up in small paper or styrofoam cups. They stay in these until I plant them or trade them away.

I have pretty good luck with them....
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Wow, beautiful! I have some triple yellow seeds soaking right now and I hope they turn out just like yours!

Tn greenthumb,
Your datura are gorgeous.

rsiemeiski,
The best luck I have with datura here in LA is to wait until spring and put them in seed starting soil and very lightly cover them with soil and keep moist. I then will place them in full sun and on cement. It is usually humid enough here that I don't have to cover the pot with plastic wrap. If it is very dry in your 9b zone I would cover the top of the pot with plastic wrap until you see sprouts then remove it. I have 99 % germination with them this way if the seed is good.
If it is winter I start them in a peat soil in a little seed greenhouse (you can get at walmart) and place on a heating mat. I keep grow lights above it as well. I find that it takes a lot longer to sprout this way but in the winter sometimes it is necessary. In the end I usually get some that sprout and end up putting the rest outside in late Feb/ March and they sprout right away.
Interestingly, this winter I started some datura and I was also starting some passiflora seeds and banana seeds at the same time. The banana seeds required cycling the temperatures (raising and lowering the temp. of the heat mat). To my suprise the datura all started germinating in 10 days as well as the passiflora including p_alata (ruby glow) which in the past have taken me a year to sprout! The bananas are 50-50 right now.
Don't give up on datura because when I first started with them I threw some in the compost pile after 6 mos. and of course there they sprouted lol.
You can order gibberic acid treated seeds as well. I do find these quicker to sprout in the seed/greenhouse method.