So, the other day I pulled some seedheads off a hibiscus in a dry, drought stricken little triangle planting, next to some shops, while I was waiting for a friend to finish shopping inside. There is no way to identify the hibiscus beyond the fact that it is one.

Anyone have experience starting these from seed? I'm intending to do a lot of wintersowing and this is a likely way I'll go for these, but thought I'd see what I might find out in advance.

Calling @kqcrna ! Our resident wintersowing fanatic!

I've only grown these from seed in a greenhouse environment. With fresh seed, you should have no trouble getting them started.

I did wintersow them once, and got a few seedlings. In fact, it was my first attempt at wintersowing. I used seeds harvested from my own old plant.

Karen

Awesome! Thanks, both. My only concern really (as I think of it later) is that no doubt there have been a lot of chemicals used on this little garden where I found the plant and seedpods.

Still, I want to grow some out, if I can. Not that there is room here for a hardy hibiscus, or another hardy hibiscus, let alone several, but, you know. They'll find homes.

there is always containers.. you can always make room

Yeah, but those containers fill up fast.

Well, shoot. I was really looking forward to growing those.

Today, I have been sorting and cleaning seeds and packing them in little envelopes and labeling them, etc. Igot to the cup with the hardy hib. seed heads in it and got started -- and found a couple little tiny bugs. Thought, oh well, and being the kindhearted fool I am, I carefully carried them outside.

Right away when I got back to the seedheads, there were more bugs, and more. I decided to take this part of the project outside.

And in the sunlight I saw that every one of the seeds had been colonized by a bug -- some kind of weevil I believe. One seed actually started running around on little bug legs, as the critter tried to get away from what was clearly becoming a bug debacle.

Very sadly and with great regret, I put the whole mess of seedheads and bugs in the garbage. I doubt there was a viable seed left in there anyway; they all had little holes in them like beads.

So.... I will be looking to collect seeds from the hardy hib that's growing right here, instead.

I do love collecting seeds around and about! and this is my first ever such experience.

That is the most aggravating thing about hardy hibiscus. What I do when I collect Hardy Hibiscus seeds is make sure they are totally dry then put them in a small plastic bag with a bit of Diatomaceous Earth (totally inorganic and has absolutely no poison in it unless it's the baited kind). The DE will kill anything that hatches. After about 2 weeks, remove the seeds and all the seeds that have round holes in them - that's where the larva was and they aren't viable.

I finally found a way to keep this from happening. I hand pollinate whatever flower I want to pollinate, cut off the petals and slip an organza bag over it and don't remove the bag until the pod is mature and starts to crack. I did that for the first time this year and I'm delighted to say, not one bug hatched out.

I get the organza bags at the Dollar Tree in the Baby Shower section.

Ah, I like that idea for using the diatomaceous earth with the seeds. I have that same problem with hollyhock weevils when I try to collect seeds. And I also like the organza baggie idea! I'll have to find an online source for those little baggies.

Wow, that's a great use of DE. Thanks very much for that suggestion.

Another suggestion that works: Put them in a plastic bag and freeze for a couple of days. It might not kill all bugs but it has killed any I've tried it on

Karen

You're welcome. You can order the bags pretty much anywhere - just do a search for "organza gift bags". They come in different sizes too.