It's Time To Start Your Seeds!

It may be cold and snowy outside, but inside at Euclid Farms spring has sprung! Family Day weekend always marks the beginning of our indoor seed starting; which means the beginning of the 2022 farm! Growing flowers from seed may seem like a daunting task, but it is truly one of our favourite things, and gives us something tangible to remind us that flowers are coming!

We always start our hardy annuals mid February (this year we even had time to get a jumpstart)! Hardy annuals are flowers that can handle a light frost once planted outside. Some of our favourites are sweet peas, snap dragons and dianthus. We usually plant these outdoors mid April so they need to be started first. We use premium organic seed starting mix, reusable plastic cell trays and humidity domes under grow lights to help seeds germinate and create the optimal environment from them to start their lives out of dormancy.

Next up are our annual seeds. Every seed has a different germination rate (time it takes for the seed to burst with life) and days until maturity (how long it takes to go from seed to flower). Some of these flowers are didiscus, lavatera, rudbeckia, globe amaranth and asters. There is quite a bit of math (well, a lot of math lol) to plan out when to start what flower based on the last frost date here in Toronto. 

Lastly, we start our tender annuals and pot up our dahlia tubers inside to jump start their growing season. Tender annuals are seedlings that can’t handle any cold temperatures such as cosmos, zinnias, celosia and strawflower. We tend to plant these out early June when we are sure there are no low temperatures at night. A good rule of thumb is planting out our dahlias and tender annuals once the lilacs have bloomed.

Did you know you can start perennial flowers from seed!? Some of our favourite perennials we grow from seed are yarrow, delphinium, meadow rue, sea oats and foxgloves (which are perennial or biennial).

In addition to flowers, we always grow a large amount of herbs to be used as both greenery in our arrangements and to ingest! Working with the beverage directors at Eataly, we grow speciality herbs and edible flowers to create a locally curated cocktail menu that cycles through the seasons! The planning process starts back in January when we carefully select which plants to grow and order the herbs. Your summer Eataly cocktails are well underway as we speak!

If you are interested in learning more about how we grow our flowers, or you're thinking of starting your own cutting garden this summer, we are offering a curated workshop this March to help you do just that! Our Start Your Own Cutting Garden Workshop will be an hour + long zoom chat with a PDF of years of collected valuable information, tips and tricks. We will discuss the importance of soil health, growing organically, the importance of pollinators, planning your garden, how to start from seed, hardening off, harvesting tips and more. There will be plenty of time to chat, time for Q&A’s loads of resources. 


Here’s to a bountiful Spring!


Shannon XO