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Gerbera daisies are not that difficult to grow from seed, but there are a few things that will improve success with them. First, the seeds do not keep well, so start with fresh seed. The seeds should be planted with the pointy end down; just stick them into your prepared flats, but leave about one-third of the seed protruding from the soil. The soil should be kept moist but not too wet, and the flats should be covered with either plastic or a humidity dome so they don't dry out. Mine did best when I set the flats on my front porch, which gets filtered sun, but not too much direct sunlight. The seeds should germinate in about a week, or sometimes less. When moving the seedlings into pots, my experience has been that they do much better in clay pots than plastic. Gerberas do not like soggy conditions, and the clay pots dry out much more quickly, lessening the danger of damping off.

I first planted these, from seed, in 2009, and I had a little trouble getting them to grow. The following year I had volunteers in many of the nearby containers. It's now 2014 and I am finding them growing hundreds of feet away from the original planting site, without having tried to grow them since the original 2009 planting. I didn't notice them anywhere for the past couple of years, so it would seem that the seeds will stay viable, at least for a while. This year's volunteers are growing in recently cultivated areas.

Depending on the vendor you get your seeds from, this has been described as either an annual or a perennial. I have a container of Emerald Falls that I started several years ago, and it is still growing happily on my enclosed back porch. I set it outside in the summer and it has produced a goodly number of very small, almost unnoticeable white flowers, which in turn produced seeds. I haven't yet tried germinating them, but I have no reason to believe that they won't be viable.

This is an easy to grow, charming little plant. It is technically a perennial, but is generally grown as an annual. Since it prefers shade, it makes a very nice companion to plantings of coleus.

I tried starting these seeds in small tubs of moist vermiculite this year for the first time with excellent results. Twice the germination rate of the ones I've started in potting soil. And much faster germination, too. Didn't keep records, darn it, but I don't think it was more than a week. They don't appreciate having their roots disturbed, though, so I transferred my sprouted seeds into peat pots till the weather allows planting out.

Edited for 2015 season: I had always heard that these plants don't like being transplanted, but this year I had no choice. And the ones I moved from pony packs to 4 inch pots did MUCH better than the ones in peat pots, even though the pots were about the same size. And they planted out with no problem.

Amazon Sunset is a hybrid of Lotus berthelotii "Red Flash" and Lotus maculatus

All parts of this plant should be considered toxic.

Be careful when harvesting seeds off this plant. There are nasty little spikes inside where the seeds are. I've pricked my fingers more than once!

You can't get much easier to grow than this. I started this plant from seed, stuffed it into a 6 inch pot and proceeded to forget about it for 2 years. It survived outdoors in that same 6 inch pot for two of our 5b winters. I finally noticed that it was still living, and trying to take over a spot where I really didn't want it, so I moved it into a much larger container. This is its second year in that container and it's now about 4 ft tall and showing a lot of blooms.

Although the plant is hardy to Zone 4, the ones I planted in containers and raised beds did not survive our 5b winter. The ones in the ground did.

This plant is extremely easy to propagate from cuttings. Break off a piece, strip the leaves off a couple of inches of stem, stick it in a pot and water it. Almost guaranteed to grow. The ones I have now are descendants from a start given to me by a friend over 40 years ago. Everyone I knew in California had at least one of these growing indoors, but we called them "Creeping Charlie." It's easy to grow and, at least in my experience, pest-free. I've never seen an aphid, a white fly or a mealy bug on one of these.

Seeds are fertile, but will not necessarily grow true to the mother plant. Seeds should be removed from the pod and slightly scratched before sowing. I tried planting the whole pod and nothing ever grew from them, but when I removed them from the pod and lightly scarified them, I had nearly 100% germination. But some of the resulting plants had very pretty pink flowers instead of red. And I had none of the pink variety growing in my garden.

"Snow Crystals" has somewhat larger flowers and a tidier, more mounded growth habit than "Carpet of Snow."

Although this is a hybrid, I have collected and sown first generation seeds that grew true to the mother plant.