How to Harvest and Grow the Seeds of Blue Indigo

My wild blue indigo has many seed pods. Can I harvest these and grow new plants from the seed? Are there special tricks to germinating baptisia?

Answer: Yes, you can collect and sow the seeds of your wild, or false, blue indigo (Baptisia australis), though propagating this beautiful, blue-flowered perennial from seed can take patience. Once established, Baptisia australis is one of the longest-lived perennials around, so your patience will really pay off in the long run.

To collect the seed of wild blue indigo, wait until the seed pods turn black and begin to open on their own, or at least until they rattle when shaken. Remove the pods from their stalks, open them fully and pull the seeds from the pods. The seeds are round and large compared to many other seeds, so they're easy to handle. Viable seed will be brown or black in color, round and very hard.

Fresh seed of false indigo germinates fairly easily. If you want to direct sow it at a certain spot in the garden, do so in the fall just, after you collect it, burying it about a quarter of an inch in the soil where you want it to grow. (Read tips for outdoor fall seed sowing here.) Seedlings will emerge in spring.

If you'd rather start Baptisia australis seed in pots, start with 4-inch pots and plant to transplant them directly into the garden from these, instead of moving them up into larger pots. That's because this is is a tap-rooted perennial that does not much enjoy being moved, so disturb it as little as possible. For the sowing, follow the steps outlined here.

Baptisia seedlings can take three or four years before they flower, but after that, they prove themselves a reliable, easy-to-grow perennial that can persist for decades.

Image credits: Baptisia flowers by F.D. Richards/CC BY-SA 2.0; Baptisia seeds by Leonardo DaSilva/CC BY 2.0