An obedient plant is a great flowering plant to add to your garden. They’re fast-growing, hardy, and highly tolerant.
They’re perennial plants and require little care. It’s also easy to start an obedient plant from seed.
The seeds can be sown as easily as digging a shallow hole in the garden bed and dropping a few. Timing is the only major factor that you have to keep in mind.
This guide will teach you how to grow and care for an obedient plant so exceptionally that everyone would think you have a green thumb.
The obedient plant, otherwise known as false daonhead or Physostegia virginiana, is a herbaceous flowering plant that requires cold temperatures and moisture to germinate.
Without these conditions, its seeds will lay dormant. Lucky for us, there are two effortless ways to break its dormancy: direct sowing during the cold season and cold stratification.
Direct Sowing
Direct sowing is exactly what it sounds like. You dig a hole wherever you want to sow the seed, drop a few, and then cover it with a thin layer of soil. After that, you just have to make sure the soil is moist.
As mentioned earlier, the only tricky part of direct sowing is the timing. You should sow them in late fall or early winter. That’s because the seed needs around 60 days to break its dormancy and start germinating.
If you sow them too late, the cold season may not be long enough to get them germinating. Sowing them right will ensure that by spring, when the snow starts to melt, they’ll have strong roots that aren’t susceptible to rot.
If you prefer to sow obedient plant seeds during spring with your other plants, you could subject them to cold stratification for 60 days before planting.
It might sound too technical and scientific, but cold stratification means putting the seeds in your refrigerator. See to it that your seeds are moist for the entire duration.
You can achieve this by mixing the seeds with a moist medium, like peat moss or sand, and keeping them sealed. You could use paper towels as an alternative. After cold stratifying your seeds, you can transfer them to your garden bed.
Now that you know how to start obedient plants from seeds, all you need is to find some. Since it’s native to North America, obtaining it is almost within arm’s reach.
Essentially, you have two options to choose from:
Buying from Gardening Shops
You can find obedient plant seeds from most gardening shops. Doing so will save you time since you won’t be harvesting them on your own.
You can also make sure you get high-quality seeds that are disease-free. Lastly, buying allows you to pick your favorite varieties.
