Annual scabious · Tongchuanshi, Shaanxi, China
When to sow annual scabious in Tongchuanshi
Main outdoor window
12 Mar - 9 Apr
The window this page is built around.
Timed from last spring frost
26 March
In Tongchuanshi, on your chosen risk.
Ready to pick
10 Jun - 10 Jul
If you plant at the start of the window.
The average last frost. Half of all years are later than this.
Step by step in Tongchuanshi
Each window is a range, not a single day. Earlier in the range buys you a longer season; later in it buys you a safer one.
Start indoors
29 Jan - 26 Feb
Eight weeks before your last frost, under cover or on a windowsill.
Sow direct
12 Mar - 9 Apr
Two weeks before your last frost.
Plant out
19 Mar - 16 Apr
One week before your last frost.
In flower
10 Jun - 10 Jul
Annual scabious through the year
Against the frost risk in Tongchuanshi
Why these dates
Sow indoors eight weeks before the last frost and plant out a week before it, or sow direct two weeks before. Pick or deadhead every few days: this is a plant that stops the moment it is allowed to set seed, and keeps going for three months if it is not.
Hardy to about -8C, so young plants take a light frost and autumn sowing works in zone 8 and milder. Keeps flowering through the first autumn frosts.
Seed packets and extension guides express timing as weeks either side of the last spring frost, because that is the only reference point that travels. Annual scabious are timed from 8 weeks before that frost for an indoor start, with planting out 1 weeks before it, and this page simply resolves those offsets against the frost date computed for Tongchuanshi.
Hardiness is not the obstacle here. Tongchuanshi is zone 7b, comfortably inside the range this crop is rated for, so an established plant should come through an average winter without protection.
The median frost-free season here is 226 days, against 90 to 120 days to first flower for this crop counted from sowing. That margin is what decides whether a late sowing is worth attempting.
Also in Tongchuanshi
Other flowers to time
Growing annual scabious in Tongchuanshi
When should I plant annual scabious in Tongchuanshi?
Aim for 12 Mar - 9 Apr in an average year. If you would rather not gamble on the weather, wait until 30 Mar - 27 Apr - by then frost has finished in nine years out of ten.
When will annual scabious be ready to harvest in Tongchuanshi?
Expect to start picking around 10 Jun - 10 Jul, based on 90 to 120 days to maturity from the planting date calculated for this location.
How much frost will annual scabious tolerate?
Hardy to about -8C, so young plants take a light frost and autumn sowing works in zone 8 and milder. Keeps flowering through the first autumn frosts.