Ground Cover Seeds

As many advanced gardeners know not all plants are produced from seed but rather from several different methods.

Certain cultivars of woody ornamentals are grafted or t-budded and then grown on to the point of sale.

In recent years tissue culture has began to take over as the desired method of reproducing certain varieties. The tissue culture process only uses a few cells to produce a plant and delivers a crop where each one is exactly the same as the next and each is on its own root system.

Let’s examine a couple of varieties that are vastly improved when reproduced by tissue culture.

For the first one we will discuss Autumn Blaze which is a cross between the red and silver maples.

In the past when only t-budded trees were available this cultivar was known to sometimes “abort the bud”.

This separation of the improved top from the red maple root stock possibly could occur for up to several years after an apparently successful graft had been accomplished.

When the tree was placed on its own root through tissue culture there was no bud to abort.

Success story number two deals with a shrub or small tree aptly named the Contorted Filbert.

For years the sign wood was harvested from a stock block of contorted specimens and grafted onto root stock or t-budded with the standard filbert supplying the root system.

No question that the resulting plants survived quite well in the landscape but many standard filbert shoots would sucker up from the root system each year and required pruning in order to retain the desired plant.

Tissue culturing solved this problem by placing the contorted filbert on its own root and thus when suckering occurred they were always contorted.

Some ground covers such as hosta and daylilies can be produced by simple division.

These varieties among others are normally field planted and grown on for one or more growing seasons, then plowed up and the dirt gently removed.

Trained workers then separate the clump down into smaller individual plants which are then sold.

Numerous ground covers are reproduced using the following method of vegative propagation.

This procedure is rather simple and involves taking cuttings from the parent plant, perhaps dipping in a rooting hormone and then sticking the stem into a light and airy soil-less mixture.

Rooting time varies by species and countless millions are produced in just this way every year.

Now how does this all relate to ground cover seeds?

Actually it is very simple as not all of these plants are available from seed but the good news is that many are. Many ground covers are available in seed catalogs and on the World Wide Web.

Check out selections offered by specialists and follow directions closely as sometimes certain additional procedures must be followed in order to have good germination.

Remember that with certain plants it may be far easier for you to simply purchase them in containers or even bare root than to attempt to grow them from seed.