Eryngium alpinum and giganteum do best with a few weeks warm, then 4-6 weeks cold, then back to room temperature. Most others such as E. planum and maritinum should do fine at room temperature. There is a very beautiful but fussy E. levanworthii that I've never succeeded with. Rattlesnakemaster needs stratification.

On the digitalis: I germinate it cool, with lights but no heat. Even 5-year-old seed germinates just fine. I cover the seed only very, very lightly with a very thin coat of vermiculite, so it still gets light. The vermiculite doesn't so much cover it as help it stay moist. I don't store any of my seeds in the fridge, just in a closet that stays fairly cool, never cold. I don't know if that matters. And I suspect it might be too late for this year's bloom, but I could be quite wrong. It's definitely too late here. Both Foxy and Camelot should bloom even better the second year. By the way, Foxy was way too short the first year here to cut, and not much bigger the second year, so I scrapped them. Perhaps they didn't like the wind. I'm trying Camelot this year, as well as growing lots of biennial digitalis, which does very well here.

I grew Eryngium alpinum two years ago. Not very many germinated, maybe 20%. No doubt I followed germination instructions in either Germania or Johnny's. The seed was either new or one year old. As it turns out, I don't really like them as cuts anyway.

When my liatris are young and small (usually because burrowing critters ate the mother plants, or I accidentally rototilled them), they don't bloom at all, or they'll make a normal-sized bloom stalk, but only one, instead of many. I don't know what happened to yours. Could have been water stress, maybe cold stress, maybe soil it didn't like, or is there any chance you got a dwarf variety? I don't really know if a dwarf variety exists, it's just a guess.

Jeanne

Do you see other liatris in your neighborhood growing taller? My guess would be your climate and cold nights. Here is seems to start showing rreen in late winter and have a long slow growing period before it blooms. It could be that it misses those warmer nights for growing in before bloomtime. Maybe a hoop house over it? Or atleast next winter, starting in about Feb?

Well it's really hard to compare myself to neighbors because we're at the bottom of the valley here and what blooms up there on June 1 might bloom here June 7 (or it might bloom June 1 too). We're a smidgen colder. But I have seen liatris blooming well and tall in various places. I thought the corms overwintered?? They shoudl be coming back this year, right? I was going to buy more, and start them earlier, but I wanted to see what they did in year #2. I guess we'll wait and see and next year plant them earlier.

As for digitalis, I can't for the life of me figure out what I did wrong. Darn. Maybe I'll just start some more and see what happens.

K

My three and four year old liatris just came through a week or so ago. It overwinters here and we get below -20 degrees some years.
I've always had them tall enough for cuts the first year.
Alan Stevens book, "Field Grown Cut Flowers" has a good section on Liatris, and succession planting.
"Plant the first corms in early April and the last ones by late July to early Aug. depending on local weather conditions. To ensure continuous harvest throughout the season, plant corms every 10-14 days in April and May, with 21 days between plantings in June and 28 in July. Corms planted later in summer flower more quickly on shorter stems....Use a two-year planting rotation. The first year, sequentially plant and do not dig in fall. Second year, sequentially plant but do not plant during May. In the fall dig the corms planted in the first year and divide. In the spring of the 3rd year, sequentially plant the first-year corms (which you dug up the previous fall), beginning the cycle again. If not overcrowded, you can leave until a third year, then have a three year cycle."
Hope that helps.
Ann

Jeanne,

What qualities of Eryngium did you not like as a cut? I know very little about this flower(only what I've seen in pictures),but I also purchased seed and was planning on trying it this yr.

Thanks,
Sherri

Kristen, I've never seen a super-short liatris stalk. If they aren't happy, they just don't bloom at all. Mine rarely bloom the year they are planted; I think the cold sets them back. But then, the second year, they bloom at normal size. And they overwinter just fine here. They do all bloom at once, though, so I don't grow very many any more. Succession-planting only works if they bloom the year they are planted, and mine don't. I guess what I'm saying is that I'd suspect not enough water or something they don't like about the soil. I don't think the cold will make them short.

Sherri, I didn't realize the eryngium flowers would be so very small. In the bouquets I make, it can only be used as filler, but I found the stems too bulky to use that way. It might work if I trimmed some of the flowers off, but anything that is that much trouble gets shovel-pruned around here. I have some in my house garden that are staying. They are an interesting curiosity with their gunmetal-blue metallic color, but best by themselves. Put any other color with them in a bouquet, and they just wash out to a yucky gray. I just couldn't work them into bouquets. I have no doubt a better colorist (EVERYBODY is a better colorist than I am) could work them into bouquets.

Jeanne