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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:02)
Welcome to the Blooming Garden podcast for growers, flower farmers and plant lovers who want to grow better, sell smarter and to really enjoy the process. I'm Jane Westoby and each week I will be sharing practical tips, expert advice and real world insights to help you get the most out of your growing season without the overwhelm. So let's dig.
right in. So have you ever sown seeds in early spring only to watch them sit there and do literally nothing for weeks? You check on them daily if you're anything like me and whisper little words of encouragement but they just sulk. And meanwhile someone else plants the same variety only a few weeks later and boom they've got instant growth.
So hang on a minute, what gives? So the answer to this lies in the equinox and how plants respond to daylight. So today I'm going to just break down photoperiodism, why some flowers refuse to grow before the equinox and how you can use this knowledge to time your sowings for maximum success. And trust me, I have learned this the hard way.
I've sown flowers way too early and if you've done that too you know who you are.
I've just watched them sulk for weeks and weeks and then I've also waited just a little longer and seen them take off like little rockets. So timing really really is everything. So if you've ever felt like your plants are ignoring you don't worry it's not you it's the science. So let's dive in. The spring Equinox is
That's the moment when day and night are exactly the same length. And from this point on, the days will either start getting longer, if it's spring equinox, which usually happens around the mid to end of March, or the days will get shorter if it's the autumn equinox and the autumn equinox
happens around the middle to the end of September time. Okay. So this has a real direct impact on plant growth. Some flowers and crops need, they just need these longer daylight hours to wake up and to start growing properly. Well, I mean, you might be asking why, because plants don't have clocks.
and they certainly don't check their calendars, but they can measure daylight. So if you've ever saved something too early and you'd had it sit there doing nothing, it's not necessarily because you did something wrong. Now you might have done, you may have not watered it, maybe not giving it the right amount of temperature. But actually, if you've got all of those things nailed, but it's just not really growing.
It's maybe because the plant is waiting for the right signals. So think of it like waking up naturally with the sunrise versus being yanked out of bed in the dead of night in pitch black. It's the same for plants. If you plant them too early, your flowers will feel groggy. Plant them at the right time and they wake up ready to grow. And this is why experienced growers
plant their sowings around the equinox using the natural increase in daylight to their advantage. So I've experimented a lot over the years and I definitely learnt some lessons the hard way. Right now, so last weekend, I've just sown some statice. So that was kind of second week of March here in the UK.
and I timed it so it's roughly about a week before equinox or actually that would have been two weeks before the equinox but by the time they germinate we'll be at equinox and I say germinate and grow a little bit because they have actually already germinated I wasn't expecting them to germinate in four days and they did but that's okay you know it's only about a week earlier than what I wanted them to germinate but that's fine that's okay they can cope with that they can cope with a week
But as soon as we hit Equinox next week, we're going to get longer daylight hours. And this will really help them to grow really, really well.
So at my recording, so Equinox is on the 20th of March this year. So we are literally seven days away from the Equinox, okay? So once they then come off the heat mats in a few weeks, what I'll then do is I will then move on to sowing the Cosmos and the Zinnias. I don't want to sow too much too soon and actually not have...
the space either on my heat mats or that I can rotate easily because we are a little bit pushed for space. And I wait to sow these just because I've been burned before. I used to sow Cosmos and Zinnias, I think way too early, just thinking that, I was getting ahead, but they just sulked and they would sit there and do nothing. They germinate, yeah, sure, but they didn't grow properly until much later.
And by then, honestly, they were already really stressed.
So I've also just sowed some dahlias again. So it's the week before or two weeks before equinox and I'll be sowing another batch probably next weekend around that time. And that's because dahlias sometimes take a few weeks to germinate. So by the time they come up, we'll be into the longer daylight hours. But you do need to remember that with dahlias, there's one.
really important rule and they must be kept indoors away from any risk of frost. If they get cold you'll lose them before they even get started. So that's super important to remember for your dahlias and that's one reason why I just haven't sowed them all now. I do not have the space to sow all of my dahlias seeds. We will be growing thousands of them this year and we just don't have the space to sow them.
all at once. So I am staggering my sowings slightly on those. timing sowings this way, aligning with the Equinox and the changes in daylight, it just means stronger plants and better results. You're sure to get a much, much better result if you wait than if you just try and beat Mother Nature and sow too early.
So the other thing which is really important to know when you're growing is the plants don't grow on a whim. They respond to photoperiodism. So this is their ability to measure the day length and decide whether it's time to grow, to flower, or to stay dormant. So depending on their response to this light,
plants fall into three basic categories. So the first one is the short day plants. So these need short days and longer nights to flower. And if the days are too long, they'll delay their blooming or they just won't flower at all. So some great examples or the best example of this really is
Dahlia's and this is why Dahlia's do so well in late summer and early autumn because by that time we are getting closer to the autumn equinox the daylight and the night time hours are getting more equal and that mimics, it's not even mimicking but that is exactly where they come from. So they come from Central America
and Mexico where the daylight and the nighttime hours are roughly equal depending on exactly where you are and that's where they originate from. So this is why dahlias love those conditions. But also Cosmos, Celocia and Zinnias, they all actually just prefer shorter day length and slightly longer nights.
and this will trigger their flowering. So then we have the long day plants. So these are all your midsummer blooms that love the heat, they love the long days, they need a long amount of daylight which will trigger their flowering.
flowers like Stata and China Aster and straw flowers. all love, love midsummer. And then the third group, the third group are the day neutral plants. So these will grow regardless of day length. They don't care about daylight hours, but what they rely on is their own maturity and temperature.
rather than daylight hours. So the best two examples of this, think really are tomatoes and cucumbers. So they're not even flowers necessarily. So yeah, they're probably the best two examples. And in the flower world, there actually aren't that many that you really, really need to be aware of. Some peas will do that as well. Okay, so.
If you sow the long day flowers before the equinox, they will just struggle a little bit and you know cosmos and zinnias for example, they will germinate but they won't do very much so they'll sit there waiting. But if you sow them after the equinox they'll take off. even if your, the other thing to remember is even if your daylight itself is increasing
and your plants are sensitive to that light, it still doesn't actually mean that they're going to do really well because the soil might actually be too cold. So you need to put these things together. So sunflowers like zinnias, for instance, they hate cold roots and if they start in chilly soil, they will stall. So that's another really, really good reason.
not to start zinnias in particular too early. If you just wait just those extra few weeks, they will germinate faster and they will grow much stronger more importantly. So, sow too early and you risk slow weak plants. If you wait, they will take off as soon as the conditions are right. So if you've ever sown seeds and been frustrated by how slow they are growing,
Now you know why, you know, it's not your compost, it's not your watering, you know, it's quite often daylight. It's something to really think about. Some flowers just aren't ready and forcing them isn't going to work. If you wait, you'll see the difference. Okay. So this is a real shorty episode. I just wanted to jump on to talk about Equinox just because we're only a week away. So it seemed very, very timely.
If you found this episode helpful, do share it with a fellow grower and I will see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Blooming Garden podcast and if you enjoyed the episode, please, please don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And if you found it helpful, I would absolutely love if you could leave us a review. So if you are on a podcast platform,
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So for more resources, guides and growing tips. So thanks for listening to the Blooming Garden podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, then don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an update. And if you find this helpful, I would really love if you could leave us a review. So if you are listening on Apple or Amazon or Spotify or any other really good podcast platform.
then please do subscribe and leave us a review on there because it really helps us to grow and it helps more growers to find our podcast and then we can help more growers which is what we really really love to do.
Jane Westoby (13:54)
So if you're looking for any growing guides or hints and tips then do head on over to our website at the Hampshireseedco.com where you can find lots of resources in the growing guide section. I will link to that in the show notes for you. So that's all until next time my gardening friends. I'll be spending the rest of the day packing your Dahlia orders and I hope that you manage to get out into the garden this weekend too. I'll see you next time.