I can tell you from experience that it takes patience. I got some triple yellow and double and triple purple Datura (metel) seeds and I put them in little peat pots and placed in one of those seed starter trays with a clear plastic lid.
It was 5 or 6 weeks later and I had almost given up on them, then slowly a few started to sprout. The double purple took even longer than that. But once they germinated, they quickly grew to almost 2 feet tall.
I put them all in pots - 3 and 5 gallon sized...I water almost everyday and fertilize and they are continually blooming and putting out seed pods.
That's just my experience in zone 10.

Let me add that heat and good soils are two important keys in growing Daturas. We don't fertlize them the same way we do the Brugmansia. If given good soil, not clay they really don't need it.

and my experience with double purple dats has been 'it's a breeze'. I'm in Florida ...put some seeds between wet paper towels for a day inside a ziploc baggie. The seeds went into potting soil in 4" pots...I believe this was in November...plants are doing very well, and it's been pretty chilly ...did the same thing over a year ago...two of those plants started blooming (in ground) last summer and haven't stopped yet.... I'm afraid I don't baby things very much...but some of the plants I have started right now also just sprouted from dropping off the mother plant...I transplanted seedlings. They like water, but not drowning and warm - sunshine, if possible. Just keep trying!! I've never tried any others, but have a few seeds and I'm about to try.... Good luck...and don't give up.

I usually soak the seeds overnight, tend to get faster germination that way. Right now I've got 5 different types, and they all germinated in my little Canadian Tire greenhouse. I keep it fairly warm, and I think they took two to three weeks, the doubles and triples taking the longest, the single Tatula came up fairly quickly, one week. I also grow in pots and in ground, I find the ones in ground grow faster and bigger, and put out more flowers, than the ones in pots.
But the ones in pots have the advantage of being movable, and
they still look very pretty.

I soak the seeds overnight and plant them shallowly in one of the little greenhouse things on a heat mat. They do seem to come up faster for me with grow lights. I bought some that were treated with gibberic acid (GA)once and they did tend to sprout much faster, but the others do sprout, it just takes a few more weeks. In general ,the fresher the seed it seems, the faster the germination but there is also a difference in the varieties.
~SJN

I don't post on here alot to excuse me if I barge in. I planted my daturas seeds in feb and have a whole bunch of little babys they are in my unheated green house the only ones not up are the dbls and triples. I still have hope though!
Tanya

Hi flowerchild5!
I bet once the soil temp warms up some in your greenhouse as the season progresses, or if you artificailly gave the dbl daturas some bottom heat, those babies will pop right up. Sometimes the same kinds of seeds can be very variable. i dont know why but for example I planted 6 seeds of wrightii recently 3 came right up like in days. One took another week. 2 more still look viable and havent show any signs of sprouting. I have the dbl ballerinas do that sometimes too.

Glad to see you post by all means please do "barge in" and post more often lol. I read alot of forums too regularly that I dont actually post much on, like the FL forum. I visit that one because those people really seem to know thier tropicals -which is what I mainly grow. I guess I should stick to the AZ forum where I live lol -but no way-can't relate too much there!! Although I grow some desert plants, I love and live for tropicals! So to the FL and tropicals forums I must go and learn :D Hope to hear from you more often here too.
~Lenette

I too do not post often but have found this forum to be extremely helpful in answering my questions about brugs. I have a bunch of little seedlings of datura (purple and white)started indoors and have repotted them into 4 inch pots. When do I put them in the ground? I figure that they will need to be hardened off and then planted, correct? Do they need the same conditions and care as brugs?
My angel trumpets are sprouting from the ground where they overwintered with extra mulch. Can't wait to see how tall they get this year. Last year they reached 4 and 5 feet tall!!!

murphy_zone7, I would set them outside in a shaded area when the weather stays above 40ish at night. After they get the second or third set of good leaves then plant them in the ground once they are harden off and have been outside for at least a few weeks. No not the same conditions as Brugs. Daturas need good soil where as the Brugs love acid clays, Daturas don't need the extra fussin' as the Brugs do. We don't even feed these and the Dats take off like crazy. Warning we have seen Daturas come back from the ground here. Our D. Missouri Marble is one we have seen come back now three years now.

sultry, if your out there somewhere I was just noticing i had posted 2 weeks ago and those daturas are still not up.
I am going to move them to get more sun and heat. all my others are up.
Tanya

Hi Tanya,
Try digging up a few of those seeds and see if they are still firm and didn't rot or sink down too deep, if they look okay, lightly cover them up with soil again. If your nights are warm enough now, I agree they should go out in a sunny spot. They should germinate better in sunlight if they are going to come up at all. Just keep them moist.

Some datura seeds can be very stubborn. I just found one the other day (a purple double ballerina seedling) that just sprouted right next to a quite large datura in a pot outside. I guess I had replanted the seed because I didn't think that first one was gonna come up lol. I think it was about 3 mos ago that I set the larger one outside.
~SJN

I just received my first datura as a housewarming gift and transplanted it to the yard where it seems to be doing well.
I think it's beautiful and have been trying to find out all I can about it.........but I have 1 question I can't find the answer to! What exactly do the seeds look like?? Is it the entire ball seed pod thing left after the flower falls off? Or are they ON the pod or INSIDE it? Dumb, I know!!!!

Also, do I dry them or can I replant right away?

TIA!!!!
Jeani

I'm not exactly sure of what you're asking, but I'll try to answer as best I can.

Depending on the species that you're growing, you'll find that the seed pod will reveal itself in different ways. I currently have a D. leichhardtii which will drop off its calyces about two days after the flowers open, and a little spiky ball will be present in its place. For D. stramonium, I find that the calyx will also fall off by itself, but not quite as neat. D. stramonium has more of an egg-shaped seed pod, albeit spiky. I'm going to take a guess and say that your housewarming gift was either D. metel or D. inoxia. D. metel often drops the calyx, but will drop its flower first. The same goes for D. inoxia, but the calyx sometimes remains until the seed pod ripens. In both cases, the calyx base needs to be present in order to have seeds. If it falls off, no seeds.

The actual seeds have a kidney shape to them, are flat, and will either be light brown or black, depending on species. The seeds will always be located inside the seed pods, which break open when all of the seeds inside have developed. You can wait until your seed pod looks fairly big, then pluck it from the branch and let it ripen in a bag, but that keeps a few undeveloped seeds from ever growing. Datura spreads like wildfire, though, so I don't think that a few little seeds will really matter.

bismuth- which species has the light brown seeds?

I'm going to jump in here and ask a question. I have some datura seeds and I was wondering what time of year they should be planted in the ground. I read February, but that was in a greenhouse. I want to put mine straight out in the yard and hope I have better luck than last time.

bismuth, Thank you! It has 3 seed pods right now, they are round and have "spiky" spots on them. One of them is huge....about the size of a small egg. I'll keep watching it and may cut it off in a few days.

Thanks again!

Last year, I bought some datura plants from a nursery and put them out in my garden. In the Fall, I noticed that there were literaly hundreds of seeds on the ground. I did not clean these up before winter. Well, this Spring, these hundreds of seeds came up and I had to take a hoe to them as they were everywhere. So, that is the MOST EASIEST way to start Datura. I live in zone 5a and probably the seeds need the freezing in order to germinate in Spring.

I USE to be able to grow Daturas like the 'weeds' that they are called. 'Jimson Weed'. They would turn up all over the place. Now that I am TRYING to grow them, and want them, the double yellow and white and purple, which I grew so easily, they now take weeks to get 1 seedling. If I get that. I finally bought a big Datura plant in a 3 gallon pot, the double purple, to get some flowers and some of my own seeds again, and to have a BIG plant! It was a whopping $8.00! I am paying that for 6 seeds!
Its like they have become rare over the years or something. and they use to sprout in days...now it is up to 8 weeks! I have bought so many double yellow seeds,and double whites and begged fro some trades to get some 'fresh' seeds'. I JUST got 1 seedling this morning of my double yellow and 1 double purple, it took 23 days. I am growing them under the light in one of my AeroGardens, in small pots and lightly covered. I use to have them all over my yard and got sick of them. Then I found Brugmansias,and forgot about Daturas,only to find out they are related! Now my Brugmansias are now gone,I am begging to get rooted cuttings now to get some going again. But this datura seed germination is such a mystery. They use to be cheap and would sprout in days under the mother plant, if I didnt pick the pod in time and the seeds fell to the ground. Now they cost a small fortune to get any seed, and they take forever to sprout! You have to 'baby' them to get them to sprout,and hope you get any to sprout!.

I hope that they return to being a 'weed' in my yard soon...and spread all over. I need color and flowers and self caring plants again. But why are they so expensive now? And take months to sprout? I know they use to take only days to pop up in my yard and we have pure sand for soil here in Ft.Lauderdale, if I didnt have these AeroGardens with the hot lights, I dont think I would have the 2 sprouts I have. Now if my double white would pop up 1 seedling, I would be set! :)

I started my angel trumpet seeds under grow lights and they have a heat mat under them as well. I have had sporadic germination but some of the seedlings are dampening off. I then put a small fan blowing on them,the problem I'm having is the seedlings that have survived seem to have stopped growing do I need to transplant the seedlings ( they are in small peat pots)and start fertilizing them or what? They were started in a seed starter mix which I'm assuming has no nutritional value in it can some please help me!

Hi folks,

Last night I put a bunch of Datura Metel seeds out to soak overnight on a Styrofoam plate with paper towels and water. This evening when I went to plant them, about 90% of them appeared as though they had sprouted?? Can anyone tell me, is this just leftovers from the inside of the seed pod that I scraped them from, or is it possible that they actually germinated? Any info would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Blondmyk

I received these seeds and just found out today what this beautiful plant was. Had no clue on how to grow or take care of the plant but as you can see by this not so nice photo it came along pretty well. Tried a solution of tea to help with the bugs but that did not deter them from munching on the leaves. Here in the North (zone 6) I really did not think they would grow. Now here is is middle of September with the temps dipping all the time (low 40's at night) and the other flower pot still has 3 more blooms coming up. I just sprinkled seeds over the soil and pressed them down. Once they had taken root and started to grow I weeded them out a bit so each pot only had 4 or 5 plants in them. My question is how do I prepare the little pods for retaining more of the seeds, as I would like to grow them again next spring? The seeds I have came from a neighbor 3 years ago via Florida.

Hello Everyone,

This is my 2nd year with Datura. I first received a bunch of seeds from a friend. When they grew I loved them. Then I started to research them & wasnâÂÂt sure if I was going to continue growing them as many sights stated their toxicity. But my husband talked me into it as he loved them. Actually he is the one that threw down the rest of my seeds this year & boy did they grow. This years seeds were from the original bag my friend gave to me. But I decided to stick with the datura so I am now learning how to obtain the seeds from the pods. Some pods I think I picked to early as the seeds were white. But my question is, âÂÂWould the white seeds turn brown or black if I kept them rather than throwing them outâÂÂ? I donâÂÂt think so, but every time I through a pod in the garbage, I wonder if? Thank you in advance for any help that can be giving to me. Here are some of pictures. I was also thinking of joining a seed exchange as I have many.

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Picture #6 is from last year as I forgot to take pictures of my datura plants this year. But this year many of them reached between 4 & 6 feet tall. I am not kidding as some plants were taller than I & I am 5âÂÂ7âÂÂ.

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I also wanted to let everyone know that my datura grew best in sand. My husband threw the rest of my bag of seeds in two garden areas in my backyard that are just about all sand here on long island, NY. These areas we usually use for our Canna that we have been growing for more than 20 years.

This post was edited by tomorrow447 on Sun, Sep 22, 13 at 17:21

I grew Daturas from seed like crazy while living in Jonesboro Arkansas Zone 8B...but....I just let the pods burst open, in the fall , and the seeds dropped on the soil in the flower bed, I never touched them until spring, and there were hundreds of baby seedlings. So I tend to believe, the Datura needs sun, for they just laid on top of the soil throughout the winter, and ba-zing.....baby seedlings in spring. Even the Daturas in pots had baby seedlings in the pot, germinated throughout the winter....unreal

They do say you should soak your seeds until they just start to sprout then plant as they can take a long time to sprout. This one is 3 years old here just south of Houston Texas. I moved it after the first year and it seems to love its location with afternoon sun. Some of the seed pods are the size of a golf ball, last year they were much smaller. We do love how well it blooms. Last year it bloomed in the spring through our summer but was yellow then but turned to this color of purple as the weather got cooler.

Exactly the same that I have so pretty.

I moved to this apartment and they removed everything on the yard . Before I moved .

Later plants started to grow .didn't know what they were called by name

But I'm learning. Thank you for sharing.

Your are welcome hope you have good luck with yours.

I am currently growing datura in pots in full to partial sun outdoors. Daily temp is in the 70s, nights are in the 50s. I sowed the seeds directly into 8 inch pots and covered with plastic to keep moisture in. I sprayed daily to keep soil moist, not soggy and now have a lot of sprouts coming up (two embryonic leaves). My question is, when should I remove the plastic covering from the pots? I'm worried the temp inside may be too hot when covered in full sun and don't want to cook sprouts.

You can take the plastic off now. They need good air flow.

I soaked some Datura seads last night and drained this morning, Now they are mush. I tried to open them to find a seed/root. Nothing

I mean seeds

I've really never soaked them, graf...but sometimes, to hurry up the germination, I've put them between damp (not wet!) paper towels for a day or two, then just right into soil. Usually they're very easy to start. And you shouldn't have to open them; once they 'sprout' you'll see it.

One surefire approach is to order them ... Growers exchange always over delivers. This guy arrived about a month ago (July 10-15) and just opened spectacularly tonight (August 14) living in a tiny pot in the driveway (full sun 6:30am-1pm, RI z6); they must self-seed this far north b/c I noticed a self-seeded cluster in a street tree pit in NYC last weekend. They do look like weeds but wow, this night blossom!

I had datura flowering one year and the nex year, datura came up all over the place. It self seeds here in Ottawa, Canada. Has anyone else had that experience?

We have a double purple datura plant this year and has produced many blooms. So far we do not see any seed pods. Does anyone know why or what to expect? Also something is eating holes in the leaves of these and our white datura plants. So much so that they are not growing and will not produce any white flowers this year. What can we use to prevent pests on moonflower plants. None of our other plants are affected.

I grew Datura for the first time this year. Without thinking i threw the seeds along my stream.

I'm in Ct.

Am i going to be in a battle with seedlings in the Spring?

I have so many seedlings of the purple datura in a lage pot . They’re about 8”-12” tall . will they die if i transplant them now? It’s late June right now..

You can transplant now and they should not die. Just be careful when transplanting them. Good luck!