Organic Echinacea. Purple Cone flower.

Description

Organic Echinacea. Purple Cone flower. Echinacea purpurea.

Large deep pink/purplish flowers with an domed cone centre. Perfect for a cut flower and also has medicinal properties. A tall flower at 90 – 110cms in height. Herbaceous perennial. Attractive to bees and butterflies.

How to grow:
Sow seeds direct into a well prepared seed bed from May to July and enjoy beautiful flowers from July to September. If you want you can start them early inside in trays in April for transplanting out when 10cms tall. Final spacing of plants 35cms x 35cms. Thrives in both dry or moist conditions and can tolerate drought when it’s established.
Once you have established plants of around 3 years old, you can lift and divide them in early spring or late autumn and grow more plants from root cuttings, make the cuttings the thickness of a pencil and 5-6 cms long.

Problem solving:
Likes full sun. It’s a warm climate species. Keep slugs off young plants.

Ways to use them:
The roots, leaves and flowers of Echinacea can be used. Please research how to use them sensibly. You can create tinctures, teas, creams and more. Roots are best taken from mature plants, so just use the flowers and leaves for the first few years.

Cultural history:
Echinacea belongs to the sunflower family Asteraceae. It’s native in north America and the native Americans used to use it extensively in medicine.

Avg contents: 0.5g (~140 seeds). Average seeds per gram = 300 seeds.