Kokoelma: Days to Maturity

One confusing thing about the term “days to maturity” is that it measures the time it takes from the seed being in the ground to the first bloom that opens. This means that you might have 70 days until the first bloom, but it might be more like 80 or 85 days until the flower really gets going.

This is probably not a problem in places with longer growing seasons, but we live in zone 4, where we only have 90-140 growing days, depending on what the frost decides to do that year.

Because we have a short growing season, we start almost all of cut flowers indoors, then direct seed a second crop of the seeds with a shorter number of days to maturity.