Hi Cynthia,

I grow at least 30-50 varieties of coleus every summer. Some saved as cuttings, most purchased from mailorder houses, greenhouses and markets from all over.

Glasshouse Works, Variations Greenhouse, Color Farm, and Singing Springs Nursery are some, with SSN having the largest plants at about the same price. You can find these with your regular search engines using these names.

I've tried several of the seeds offered by many nursery/seed companies and have found them to go to 'head' far sooner than the ones bought as cuttings.

What I do is to let these cutting/propagated coleus to go to seed, allowing the bees, flies and butterflies to pollinate the flowers. Then I save that resulting seed. It's a little messy, but just allow the flower spikes to dry up and cut off the stem, below the flowers. I fold large white artist paper in half twice to make a pocket to put the flower head. There it dries additionally and will collect any seeds that fall out. The seeds still in the dried foliage then has to be 'threshed'. This is the messy part.

The advantage of all of this trouble is that you can get some really unusual plants. Colors and combinations that I've never seen for sale.

I'd really recommend trying this as the purchased seed raised coleus I've grown doesn't get a foot tall before it starts to head out.

Some of the coleus sold by these firms is supposedly from plants originated over 100 years ago.

Gary

I have a bunch of coleus plants that I bought and planted last summer. One is a "pineapple" and the other has a lot of different reds and pinks. I was out there the other day trying to figure out where the seeds where on these plants. They all had those long purple flower stalks on the end but I didn't see anything that looked like seed? I'd love to try and recreate these two from seed. What do the seeds look like?

Seeds of Distinction sells Coleus "Splashdown" (dunno if there are others they sell), Park Seeds sells Palisandra and a few others. Stokes Seeds sells 16 different varieties.

Another place, seedwarehouse.com, sells 14 varieties, and also sells in grower-size quantities for cheap. One example, 1000 "Rainbow Red Velvet" seeds can be for $2.17.

Jason

Making your own hybrids, Gary, that's very cool. I have some Gasteria seedlings that were sent to me from California. They were hummingbird pollinated, so not a known species. Both look very different. Making new hybrids is exciting and interesting.

Hello all,
I can't really claim to have hybridized coleus. Stopped at Glasshouse Works in Ohio and talked to the owners.

There they HYBRIDIZE Coleus with paint brushes. My eyes are not good enough to see the little anthers and pistils, plus my hands aren't steady enough, if I could see. Plus I'd have to have all the plants in pots, so I could lift them up to work on them.

I'll just keep letting the natural process happen and take advantage of what comes out. The round seeds, which look like pepper are about the size of the period in these sentences.

As far as starting the seed, I never seem to start early enough. My plants are always catching up to those of the nurseries. I would recommend starting as soon as you can. Like NOW. If you have good viable seed it should come up withing 1-2 weeks. I always wait until there are 'true leaves' to transplant. These are the second or later sets of leaves.

Coleus are truely gorgeous plants and to see them develope from inconspicuous little specks to plants with unimaginable colors is a wonder.

Happy Coleus to all, Gary

I just checked out the seedwarehouse.com site. It looks to me as if only huge quantities of each coleus type can be purchased. 1,000 seeds per package would be do-able, but most of their varieties are 5,000 and more.

This year I purchased a half flat of the prettiest coleus (brown, pink, cream combo) from Meijer's. I wasn't sure how it was going to work with my garden which is mostly pinks and purples, but it looked great, and it was the healthiest, long lasting coleus. However, I don't remember the name of it, and I want to make sure I can get it next year. Does anyone know what it might be - the name had "chocolate" in it I believe?

If anyone has extra coleus seeds they would like to share, please contact me. Thanks.

I usually just get my seed from Wal Mart. I get their rainbow type mix and have had great results. Mine got to 30" before they started to head, but I just pinch out the tops and let them continue. I used to buy some of the better varieties grown from cuttings, but as I don't have a greenhouse or a good place to winter mine I don't try to carry them over from year to year. I will try to save some seed as Gary has suggested. I can't envision a gardening season without coleus. Have a great weeekend and a great garden! Jon.