When to sow honesty in Baoding

Why these dates

Sow in early summer, six weeks after the last frost, in shade or part shade. Move to the final position in autumn. Flowers the following April, then sets the discs through summer; cut the stems when the pods turn beige and rub the brown outer skins off to reveal the silver.

Hardy to about -20C as a rosette and needs winter cold to flower. Tolerates dry shade under trees better than almost any other flowering biennial.

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. Honesty are timed with planting out 20 weeks after it, and this page simply resolves those offsets against the frost date computed for Baoding.

Hardiness is not the obstacle here. Baoding is zone 7a, comfortably inside the range this crop is rated for, so an established plant should come through an average winter without protection.

This is a two-season crop, so the dates above describe a sowing in one year and a flowering in the next. The plant spends the winter in the ground as a small rosette, which is why the frost-free season in Baoding does not limit it the way it would limit a tomato: it is not trying to finish before the cold arrives, it is trying to be well enough rooted to sit through it. Sowing too late is the real risk, because a plant that goes into winter undersized often fails to flower at all the following year.

See every crop timed for Baoding →