Seed starting indoors isn’t just for vegetables! In fact, it’s super easy to start your perennial flowers indoors as well. Not only will these gorgeous varieties help bring some color to your garden this year, but they’ll bring the pollinators too, which is oh-so-important if you’re growing vegetables.
Why Start Perennial Flowers Indoors?
One of the biggest advantages to seed starting perennial flowers is that you can get a huge jump start on the growing season. While most gardening has to be done after the last frost (usually in mid-late March for most gardeners), you can start seedlings before that. Getting a jump start on the growing season often helps to make plants more disease and drought resistant. Plus, getting a jump start on the growing season means that you’ll get your first flower sooner, so that you can enjoy blooms all summer long. Here are 10 perennial flowers to start indoors 4-6 weeks before the last harvest in your area.
Black-Eyed Susan
Black-eyed Susan is one of the most common wild flowers found around the United States, and you may even find that it propagates in your garden without you even having to do anything! However, if you’d like to bring these vibrant flowers to your garden, start the seeds indoors 4-6 weeks before the last frost and move them outside when daytime temps hit 60 degrees. If all goes to plan, you’ll have blooms in a month!
Yarrow
Yarrow is wildly easy to sow indoors. It just needs warmth, consistent moisture, and sunlight. Sow them directly in the soil, covering seeds with about an inch of matter. Once they’ve seeded, add a fan to the mix as yarrow loves plenty of good air flow. Expect seeds to germinate within 14 days if grown indoors. Move outside just as soon as temps hit 70 degrees consistently.
Snapdragon
Snapdragon made my list of top ten seeds to sow indoors this spring. One of the sweetest-smelling plants out there, this vibrant plant comes in pinks, oranges, blues and any other hue you can imagine. If you’re going for a cottage flower garden vibe this year, start growing Snapdragons indoors right now!
Lavender
Lavender is a herb chock full of health benefits. Not only is the aura calming, but you can infuse lavender leaves in tea and other recipes. Additionally, lavender blooms are positively gorgeous. To learn more about growing lavender, check out this tutorial.
Bee Balm
Bee Balm is one of my favorite perennials to grow outdoors because it packs A LOT of color into small containers, and is great as a “background element.” Because these flowers take a long time to bloom, it’s best that they are started indoors around mid February so that you can fully enjoy the vibrant blooms all summer long.
Butterfly Bush
Butterfly Bush seeds take about 1-5 weeks to fully germinate, so plant them indoors now to move to your garden come April or just as soon as outside temperatures consistently hit 74 degrees. While Butterfly Bush plants don’t typically have a high percentage of germination, sowing them indoors helps to make the process a bit more successful.
Allium
Allium plants won’t flower until the fourth growing season, but the sooner you start them indoors, the more successful the plants will be across the long run.
Columbine
Press Columbine seeds into the soil to begin sowing them indoors–they only need to be covered by a bit of soil to grow well, so pressing them directly into the soil will work fine.
Sedum
One of the easiest perennials to grow from seed, Sedum plants have leaves that resemble that of a succulent. Plus, these gorgeous plants will put out a dramatic showing of flowers year after year. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Primrose
Start these 8 weeks before the last frost date, and transplant outdoors, to the nearest shady spot, as soon as temperatures are consistently 65 degrees.
