Forget about buying expensive seedlings and young plants to fill those hanging baskets, flowerpots, and windowboxes. The absolute showiest is Rainbow Treasure, and you can grow it for pennies a plant! It regales you with spring blooms of white, pink, and rosy-red (all 3 colors at once, on every plant!), followed by big, red, juicy-sweet berries in summer. And the large dark green leaves, neatly veined for a pleated look, remain attractive from early spring until frost!
And Rainbow Treasure needs no coddling or fancy treatment to reach its full potential. Sow the seeds indoors about 2 months before the last scheduled spring frost date, covering them with soil-starting medium or dropping them into the hole of the Bio Sponge. If using seed flats, cover the whole flat with a piece of paper to keep out light; in the Bio Dome, the absence of grow lights is enough. The seeds should germinate in 21 to 28 days at 68 to 75 degrees F.
The plant itself is neat and compact, just 12 to 20 inches high and about a foot wide. Beginning in early summer, it's topped by chartreuse puffballs, about 2? inches wide, that really do look like Peter Cottontail rummaging around in your grass for a dropped Easter egg! They are soft, fluffy, and absolutely irresistible to touch -- a big child-pleaser and a nice edging for a pathway, where visitors will smile as the bunny tails brush their legs!
As summer turns to fall, the bunny tails turn to rich tan and dry out beautifully on the plant. You can leave them there -- they make spectacular winter accents, lasting until they catch the first heavy snowfall (or all season in mild climates). Or you can cut them and use them in dried arrangements, where they will last for MONTHS, refusing to shatter the way some textured grasses do after drying.
Bunny Tails is a pleasure to grow, too, because it favors sandy soils that many other plants shun, and once it gets its roots established, it's quite drought-tolerant. Give it plenty of sunshine, water throughout the growing season, and watch it fill your garden with bobbing, fluffy blooms! And of course it makes a fine complement to just about any flowering plant in containers, where you can pat the bunny all you want!
Space these plants about 10 to 12 inches apart for a solid "bunny field" of color! Pkt is 50 seeds.
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