In My Garden Blog
June 8, 2006
Pacific Northwest
By
Patt Kasa,
Seattle, WA
Forget-me-nots are also available in pink and white, but I love the sky blue variety.
Fabulous Forget-Me-Nots
Forget-me-nots are so beautiful and easy to grow that I'm not surprised I see them so often in local gardens. For about a month in spring, their low mounds of fresh, green, thumb-shaped leaves send up 6- to 12-inch-tall stalks bearing blue, and sometimes white or pink flowers. The flowers are each only about 1/4 inch across, but there are lots of them. From a short distance they look like small puffs of soft color, wafting through the garden.
Forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) are usually biennial. They stop flowering and set seeds with the arrival of summer heat. Small seedlings appear unobtrusively in fall, then bloom the following spring. You may also run across perennial forget-me-nots (M. scorpioides), which thrive in boggy sites. Perennial forget-me-nots don't put on as impressive a show as their biennial cousins, but they can flower over a much longer season, usually from spring all the way through summer.
Once you have forget-me-nots in your garden, you're likely to always have them. They seed themselves in the shady, moist places that suit them best. Starting with a dozen or so plants, you can have all the forget-me-nots you want within a few years. I've never bought them. My first plant arrived as a hitchhiker in a pass-along pot of begonias, a gift from a very dear friend. I always think of her when I admire my collection of forget-me-nots.
Impish Behavior
Forget-me-nots have a habit of coming up where they want to rather than where you want them to. They sometimes seem almost clever, creating unanticipated and beautiful combinations. Left to themselves, they can form a pale blue carpet through which late-flowering bulbs, primroses, and taller perennials can find their way.
If you don't want to leave combination-making to chance, wait until spring and move the plants to suit your taste. Forget-me-nots are easy to move. I lift mine with a trowel, pile them up in a basket and plunk them where I want them. They bloom just as profusely in their new homes as plants that have not been disturbed.
Moving forget-me-nots opens up all sorts of possibilities. For example, you might try interplanting them with early tulips, such as Darwin Hybrids, which bloom at the same time. Plant the tulip bulbs in the fall. Then transplant forget-me-nots around the emerging tulip shoots in the spring. Vibrant pink or red tulips look magnificent hovering over a carpet of pale blue forget-me-nots.
Forget-me-nots also make beautiful pot plants. Dig them in the spring and transplant them into a container with spring-blooming annuals, such as pansies or snapdragons. When summer arrives, replace the forget-me-nots and pansies with heat-tolerant annuals and you'll have a long season of color.
Care and Culture
Forget-me-nots prefer cool weather and moist soil. They grow best in lightly shaded areas, but in wet soil they can take full sun. In hot-summer climates, they need shade and extra moisture to survive.
Forget-me-nots are easy to start from seeds. Just scatter seeds in a shady garden area at the end of summer. The seedlings will have plenty of time to settle in before winter. You can also start seeds indoors. In spring, sow the seeds on the surface of moistened potting soil and keep the temperature about 65 degrees F. Once the plants are big enough to handle, acclimate them slowly to life in the outdoors before transplanting them into the garden. If you start seeds indoors in early spring, you may have flowers by fall; spring-sown plants that don't flower the first year will overwinter and bloom the following spring.
Because forget-me-nots are usually biennial, they die soon after they flower. Death is not their finest hour; they grow leggy, dry up, and are sometimes beset by powdery mildew in their waning days. But to ensure a good crop the following year, you must resist the temptation to pull them up, for they are setting seeds during this brief unattractive period. Happily, when forget-me-nots look their worst, many perennials are coming into bloom, and annuals are beginning to fill in. I try to overlook my sad plants at this time and concentrate instead on the vibrant colors of my lobelia and impatiens.
Whether you let them sprout and grow where they want, or move them to produce a specific effect, forget-me-nots are always very accommodating. Once you are familiar with them, they will become part and parcel of your spring garden.
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Comments on Fabulous Forget-Me-Nots
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Jill Shepherd
Forget me nots might be the Alaska state flower, but they are an
invasive weed in the garden I tend at my apartment building. I rue
the day a former tenant planted a couple in a round bed that has
some nice perennial lilies and peonies. The forget me nots are so
thick they emerge in the spring like a green carpet. It's not
possible to weed them out, so this year I sprayed them with an
organic weed killer that contains vinegar, oil of cloves and
lecithin. It killed what it touched but I couldn't get it too close
to the plants I want to save so there is still lots of it. They are
taking over. I don't recommend planting them -- ever.
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Patt
As noted in the third paragraph, once you plant forget-me-nots,
you’re likely to always have them. Some gardeners cringe at the
thought, other welcome the self-sowing characteristics of
forget-me-nots because, in the right setting, they can grow into an
effortless and attractive groundcover.
You can control forget-me-nots, as well as other self-sowing annuals
and biennials, by simply pulling the plants up before they set
seeds. You can either pull them as they first develop if you want to
immediately rid your garden of them, or you can enjoy their flowers
and pull them up before they set seed. There’s a grace period
between fully opened flowers and the mechanics of seed development.
If you pull the plants just as the petals of the first flowers begin
to wilt, you’ll effectively remove the next generation of
forget-me-nots. In your case, where you are finding a carpet of
emerging seedlings, you can eradicate the plants while they’re young
by scraping over the tops with a trowel or hoe. Without foliage for
photosynthesis, the plants will die. If the plants resprout, scrape
the tops off again. If you are persistent, you’ll kill off the
unwanted plants without having to resort to chemicals.
I’m one of those gardeners who enjoys having forget-me-nots in the
garden and find them easy to control, but I’m having a devil of a
time with Houttuynia which spreads by underground rhizomes and pops
up in the most unexpected places. Eradicating this plant requires
digging nearly a foot deep to remove any traces of the spreading
roots. I’d rather pull a carpet of errant Forget-Me-Nots than dig a
trench to remove Houttuynia rhizomes!
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MARIA
Yes, I just received my first ForGet ME Nots ,this Spring.My
Mother had passed them on to me, i had been asking for them, for
quite some time now.
She just moved into a town house & it has a smaller yard. So I told
all my friends that I was going to go shopping at Mom's Nursery, all
& all I walked away with almost a full 3/4 ton truck load of plants.
It was quite a hull, but it was worth it, so many different
verieties that I propably would not have dared to venture in to..
Back to the Forget Me Nots, I was working in the yard today, trying
to orginize some of the cahouse,I was looking for some smaller
plants to plant along our single wide mobile. I noticed in one of my
Mom's pots was a lil blue dainty flower could it be i thought , yes
it was Forget ME Nots, awsome iI finnaly got some, so I lined them
along the trailer, along with some other perinials,those things that
come back each year. So it's already has added a lot of color to the
entry way... Success at last..
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Patt
Lucky you! I think pass-along plants are treasures! First, you know
they're hardy because they've multiplied to the point that they're
overcrowded in someone else's garden; second, they serve as
reminders of the generous person who shared them with you; third,
the price is right; and fourth, you never know what else might pop
up after you've replanted them in your own garden. That's exactly
how I got my first forget-me-nots. I love them. Glad you do, too!
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Carl
Myasotis have an extensive rhizome system you would have to be
"persistant" for years. These plants are weeds introduced and are
extremely intrusive. In the Santa Cruz mountains of California they
have become a very real ecological problem. When in force they choke
out the native plants that the local fauna feed on forcing them out
of even more of their natural habitat. Forget me nots should all be
removed whenever, whereever found outside of their native regions.
No non native invasive plant should ever be introduced.
The question I have is how do you eradicate Myasotis? Is there a
truly organic vegicide that will break down and not leave the ground
barron?
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Patt
You can control forget-me-nots, as well as other self-sowing annuals
and biennials, by simply pulling the plants up before they set
seeds. You can either pull them as they first develop if you want to
immediately rid your garden of them, or you can enjoy their flowers
and pull them up before they set seed. There’s a grace period
between fully opened flowers and the mechanics of seed development.
If you pull the plants just as the petals of the first flowers begin
to wilt, you’ll effectively remove the next generation of
forget-me-nots. In your case, where you are finding a carpet of
emerging seedlings, you can eradicate the plants while they’re young
by scraping over the tops with a trowel or hoe. Without foliage for
photosynthesis, the plants will die. If the plants resprout, scrape
the tops off again. If you are persistent, you’ll kill off the
unwanted plants without having to resort to chemicals.
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