You might want to post this on the perennials forum as this forum is for true lilies (lilium).Not sure what your zone is. They like loamy soil, moist but well-drained( doesn't almost everything) with dappled shade.I wish I could be of more help but here if you leave a pip lying on the ground you'll have a plant. Very aggressive. I know that zones over 8 are to hot for them and possibly even some parts of 8. It may be a zone thing?!

They are a weed here. Throw the pips on the ground and they take off. I've been digging them out for a decade and haven't made a dent. They smother more desirable perennials and their fabulous scent only lasts a week.

I would not think they needed to be started indoors. It may be too hot in summer for them in your climate. I'm zone 8 but we barely get any days over 80* and we get tons of rain.

They should do best planted directly outdoors (although they can be forced indoors). They like a richly organic soil with good drainage but also with even moisture. And some shade. And make sure to locate somewhere where they can be allowed to spread as once established, they can be quite aggressive.

In hot summer areas or with high humidity, they can go dormant quite soon after blooming.

If you lived in my zone, I would say you are in luck. When we bought this house 28 years ago, I found them here and have been digging them out every year since, and cannot get rid of them. I would recommend you plant them outdoors in a shaded spot with adequate moisture. They should take off. But beware of them, they are agressive.

I have been trying to dig these up and give them to anyone who wants them. In My Enfield home they were kept in check by a swamp maple (lots of thin roots at ground level). When I moved to Middletown they just invaded everything so I made the decision they had to go. I dug one bunch up, just pulled on it and pulled a 3 foot by 12 inch bunch of rhizomes all tightly packed together.

I often joked, because the local plant shops sell three pips for about $5.99, that I could pay my mortgage selling this invasive weed to unsuspecting gardeners.

Tim

I just have to tell you a funny concerning lil of the valley. Been married now for over 50 years I got these plants from a friend planted them and for years they just sat there now last 2 years they are really getting out of control. Only thing I can figure out the mulch helped vitalize the soil. ODD

I bought pips at well respected greenhouses in my area. For years I had no luck. They'd never come back. My Mom told me the secret to getting them to grow was to get them from someone who loves you. She got hers from a friend. I got mine from her. They are just starting to spread, which is what I was hoping for.

Mind you I planted the ones I got from her in the SAME locations where the bought ones had died! Go figure.

They do like shade. Peat pots are usually for starting seeds. Peat pots provide no nutrients to the plant. Try potting it in potting soil or plant it outside.

Oh boy, they are a weed here too, in some places, kind of a nice weed, but how they do travel, terrible!
** the first year after planting the pips, they usually take a year to look like anything, before I got smart and realized how invasive they are, I wanted some, and I was disgusted because the year I planted them, they collapsed, looked like nothing. Next year, onward ho!

I have had mediocre results transplanting them and worse results removing them. I don't have the skill to transplant correctly, so I tried brute force. I took massively heavy blocks (five to six inches down and one to three sq feet) in late fall and placed them in larger holes with loosened and enriched soil under and around those blocks and just a few inches separating each block from the next. I expected they would fill in between those blocks, to fill an 9ft by 3ft that I surrounded by large nearly buried rocks to contain them. For four years, each original block produced flowers and lush foliage and none have spread toward any other. Each fall I pull out the rocks, cut off the runners under the rocks and put the rocks back. But in some gentle test digging between the blocks, I found zero runners. They want to spread exactly and only where I don't want them to. Meanwhile they popped back up even where I went down a full 6 inches when removing them. A few blocks (from where I originally needed to remove them) I wasn't ready to put in their intended place, so I dug holes elsewhere just the size to fit them, to store for a year, planning to retransplant. I procrastinated and finally moved them after 3.5 years. The roots on those blocks extended aggressively downward (below the 6 inches I transplanted each time and took lots of cutting to split the top 6 inches from what was below. But they didn't extend out (at least in the top six inches) at all.

Looking at the behavior of many different patches, it appears that the foliage is stronger looking and last much longer in the fall when growing in relatively more soil and less rocks. But in extending its roots outward from an established patch, it very strongly prefers more rocks. It grows down before out when the soil has more rocks underneath and its roots grow rapidly along the underside of nearby big rocks while avoiding rock free soil in other directions.