The easy-care bearded carnation is very easy to grow yourself by sowing. The mostly biennial summer flower impresses with its pleasant scent and its decorative flowers in pink, red or white, single or multi-colored, double and single-flowering.
Where do I get clove seeds and what do I have to consider?
Bearded clove seeds can be collected yourself or purchased. The color purity of self-collected seeds is not guaranteed. The plants are hardy, self-seeding and require light to germinate. Purchased seeds offer a wider range of colors and double or single flowers.
Do I have to buy the seeds for the bearded carnation?
You can easily collect the seeds of the bearded carnation yourself from your plants if you do not cut off the wilted inflorescences but let them ripen. If you don't want to go to this trouble or if you don't have any bearded cloves yet, you can find a wide variety of seeds in specialist shops (€2.00 on Amazon).
Depending on your taste, you can shop online as well as in local nurseries or specialist shops. Colorful mixtures with double or single flowers are often offered, but occasionally individual colors are also available. This is especially true for rarer or special colors, such as the black-red flowering variety Dianthus barbatus nigrescens “Sooty”.
Are the seeds always pure in color?
With the seeds you buy, you can assume that you will get the colors shown on the bag; with a colorful mixture there should be at least a certain variety of colors. The plants grown will also be filled as desired or simply flowering.
If, on the other hand, you sow seeds you collected yourself, then your experiment will be like a little surprise bag, because you don't know which hereditary characteristics of the parent plants will prevail. You can only grow your own plants with pure colors through cuttings.
Does the carnation sow itself?
Like many other summer flowers, the bearded carnation sows itself, provided you don't cut off all of your plants after flowering. Leave a few inflorescences to allow the seeds to mature. They fall to the ground and soon germinate. As light germinators, they do not require any special treatment from the gardener. The young bearded carnations are relatively hardy and only need light protection from the cold.
The most important things in brief:
- buy or collect
- hardy
- collected seeds are not pure in color
- self-seeding
- Light germinator
Tip
Very “lazy” or comfortable gardeners without specific color wishes can rely on self-sowing the bearded carnation. This way you always get a colorful bed of summer flowers.
