English Tall/Vera Lavender Seeds

Disclaimer up front- these seeds take forever to germinate. But if you're patient, they will grow. I planted 30 seeds and ended up with seven plants. One of them is absolutely thriving, and it's growing in conditions that will supposedly kill lavender. It's in partial shade, under an elderberry in my hedge. The soil is mushroom compost and it gets much more water than my provence lavender, which prefers to be ignored. The ones that I planted in crappy soil and barely watered, which is what we're told to do with lavender, have all died or barely survived. I'm going to start more and winter them in my new greenhouse. And then I'm going to plant them in my berry hedge, since I know they will like it there.

I've had success germinating this particular Botanical Interests lavender. I did a lot of research on the germination method. Here's what I did. I prepared the seeds by putting them in a damp paper towel, in a zip-lock, and in the fridge. (This is the so-called "cold stratification" process, possibly one of the most pretentious terms used in all of gardening.) I kept the seeds stored in the fridge for 3 months. I can't tell you if that time is necessary; you might be able to get away with a shorter time (perhaps ~1 month). I took the seeds out of the fridge and let them sit at room temp in the bag for 1-2 days. I could see that they were already popping. I scraped the seeds off of the wet napkin and onto a block of loose soil, and then sprinkled an ultra-thin layer of loose soil on top. (I deliver water by misting regularly with a spray bottle.) Within a day, the seedlings started to emerge. The picture below is after 4-5 days. I live in Zone8a. I've been exposing these seedlings to the mid October sun in my area during the day time (which is ~75F). The nights have started to dip into the low 40's, so I bring them inside. We'll have sufficiently warm days to continue this process through October. Then, they will grow up indoors in the coldest part of our winter (without grow lights, just window light). Once the seedlings grow larger and form leaves, I'll pluck them and shift them over to cups. In late Feb, I expect to start bringing them outside on warm days again. By…