Flower · Apiaceae
When to sow bishop's flowers
The white lace umbel that florists build bouquets around, and a far better garden plant than the wild carrot it resembles. Flowers for six weeks and cuts with a vase life of ten days.
Start seed indoors
8 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
2 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Sow direct
3 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make bishop's flowers plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 8 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 2 weeks before the last frost.
- Sow direct 3 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 100–130 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Hardy in USDA zones 3a–10a.
Getting the timing right
Sow direct three weeks before the last frost, or start indoors eight weeks before it in modules - it moves reasonably well when small, unlike most umbellifers. Support a stand with a single row of netting; at 1.2m it goes over in wind. An autumn sowing gives the strongest stems.
Frost tolerance
Hardy to about -12C as a young plant, which makes it one of the most reliable hardy annuals for autumn sowing in zone 7 and milder. Tolerates heat better than most of this group.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -12°C (10.4°F)10.4°F (-12°C).