Outsidepride Alcea Rosea Indian Springs Hollyhock Seeds - 1000Pcs Annual Mix of Pink, Rose & Red Heirloom Hollyhocks Flower Seeds w/Semi-Double Blooms for Cottage Gardens & Cut Flowers (AAS Winner)

Good seeds had many germinate and growing nice

By August the plants were 5 foot high and loaded with flowers. I will plant them again next year.

Grew but didn’t bloom!

Not many coming up. Perhaps just the nature of the seeds? They seemed fine and there were a lot of them.

Wow, I LOVE these! They are absolutely stunning and beautiful! I expected 5-6ft at most based on the description but the majority of them are massively tall in my garden. Compare them to the Trellis at the top of the stairs that go down my terraced garden - they're much taller than it. They're really beautiful, tons of blooms, very long-lasting & they've held themselves up with no problem except for the few that unfortunately had a pesky gopher eat their roots.Notes on why they may be growing so great in my yard:1. We're in a warmer area of the greater San Francisco Bay area, so great growing weather - not too hot, not too cold.2. We'd just terraced the back hill for planting and dumped in tons of high quality growing soil.3. The terraced areas area is NW facing and gets tons of sun, including the hottest of the day evening setting sun.4. We have a drip system to the terraces, so they receive regular water (although many are growing in areas that don't have a direct drip near them).I'm sure the above helps significantly. I have another area that we didn't put good soil, it's just the quite-dry dirt that was already there, and most everything I planted in that area is not growing. However, I did not try any of the hollyhocks in that area.

I was very worried when everyone was saying you won't get blooms the first year. This is simply not the case, only that it takes a long time until bloom time, about 12 weeks from seed, so I suggest you start indoors. Most of my seed did take, to the point that I had more than I could possibly use so I just let some die. Unfortunately a groundhog got to some of my plants and so not all will recover before first frost. The photo was taken 2 days after the first bloom appeared, but as you can see it's just loaded with buds and is the light pink to the right of the photo (I don't know yet what other colors will appear). I ran irrigation drip and some super phosphate to these plants but otherwise left them alone.

Update: They sprout well, but seem to die off quickly. The pictured plants are the largest I've been able to keep. I'll update again after sowing directly into ground.I can't even explain how much I love hollyhocks. I had two dwarfs but they died while I was on vacation. I haven't have the same sort of daily satisfaction from any other plant (Hibiscus is close). Every day you'll get new blooms that last and it's so beautiful.This is a very fat packet of seeds. The shipping method beat them up a bit but they don't appear damaged. Hollyhocks are super easy to germinate and they reseed themselves, so you get some started and from there it's mostly maintenance.I can't wait to see how these preform in comparison to my giant hollyhock seeds.

Very good germination rate.Now, what do I do with a thousand hollyhocks!?I put soil in an old plastic food container; threw a bunch of seeds over the surface; kept the soil moist; and sprayed with water twice a day.I kept them in a small greenhouse in the house, at ~80F -- we still have snow on the ground, and freezing temperatures.It took at least 2 weeks before the seeds started sprouting, but then they really took off.