Wild Hollyhock Advice
I found some Hollyhock seed pods in Suffolk and decided to try an experiment to see if they would grow in the garden if sown in October as if put there by nature.
In September, I put them in a plastic bag for two weeks in the freezer to kill off any wevil eggs and start the stratification process. Then I sowed them outside *there must have been about 300* all over the place - against the side of the house in the cracks and also in the soil behind some wisteria trees.
It's been a couple of weeks now and I can see that many of them have started to come up.
Initially I figured that if they were in the wild they would drop their seeds and just pop up.
Now I'm wondering - will these seedlings grow and survive our British winters? If Hollyhocks were growing in the wild - they are known for self seeding prolifically, but now that I have sown them myself I am a little worried and feel responsible for these little guys.
If I just leave them to it this winter - will they be there by spring? Or will the first frost kill them off?
Posts
a good lot of them will survive, they've got more growing time yet.
In the sticks near Peterborough
When I was at a little village school many many years ago the playground was surrounded by hollyhocks growing out of the cracks between the tarmac and the walls - they grew there for years, seeding themselves into the cracks and growing and blooming with no interference or help from any human - they were a picture every summer - I'm sure yours will be fine