while I'm sure there are many different types of Canterbury bills when I want to go buy some all I could find were two the classic cup and saucer from Burpee and the more simple bell-shaped Canterbury bills from fairy Morris since these are pretty much all that are available these are what I'll be using in this test to see how they grow in the garden let's see what they look like although the seed packets may feel almost empty in fact because the Canterbury Bell seeds are so small there can be several thousand of them so it's a good buy handling seeds this small is very difficult if you want to do germination tests where you plant a specific number in a specific way it's almost impossible what I've had to result to is just the pinch and sprinkle technique several years ago I did a comparison study of which potting soil produced the best seedlings what I found was that super soil does the best because Canterbury Bale seeds are so small what I prefer to do is run it through a quarter inch screen before potting them up because the larger pieces are so close so of course that they can actually interfere with the germination and development of their roots to plant I like to use five ounce cups with drainage holes that I filled up to the top and then I soak them for 10 minutes in very hot water which cools now to about 80 degrees which is ideal for germinating Canterbury bells I let it soak for a while so ensure that everything is thoroughly saturated with water and then before I drain the water off I take a pinch of seed and slowly spread it right onto the still wet surface and then let it soak a little bit longer so that I am sure that the seeds are thoroughly saturated Canterbury seeds are so small it's somewhat dangerous to try to cover them even the lightest coverings can create problems what I do instead to make sure they don't dry out is cover them with light transparent plastic to keep the humidity up I do not cover them and that should be about yet I'll probably get five or six plants per pot I'll thin those down to the one strongest even though these are very small pots they will be large enough to allow the Canterbury bells to grow for a good three months they grow very slowly and they stay small for a long time I always start my Canterbury bells inside because they are so small they are very easily eaten by almost any insect you'll find on the outside it also allows me to get them off to a faster start this is the grow chamber inside my house it is lit by 640 watt fluorescent grow lights and heated underneath the pots by a matte set to 80 degrees if you notice eight of the pots are covered with a sheet of aluminum foil this is to block out the light I have read that some references say that Canterbury bells need light to germinate this is an experiment to see if that's true okay here we are two weeks later the seedlings actually germinated in only eight days I was running the temperature a little high around an average of 82 degrees this is two weeks later and as you can see the first set of leaves have opened we have a pretty good germination rate the first thing I'd like to point out is that these two rows of four were the Canterbury bells that were under the aluminum foil and in the shade they germinated at about the same rate as the ones that had full light so this would seem to indicate that the idea that Canterbury bells need light to germinate is not true one of the drawbacks of the pinch and sprinkle technique of scattering seeds into your cuffs is that you end up with very irregular germination patterns and you can get cluster of plants which will can choke each other out what you're going to need to do then is to do some thinning I usually like to leave two or three widely spaced seedlings to grow until they start to crowd each other so that if one fails the pot isn't empty the temptation is to use the tweezers because these are very small as you can see and pull them out that's fine if they're 1/2 an inch apart or more the problem is when you have two like this that are very close pulling this one out could damage the roots of its close neighbor what I prefer to do is to use scissors and go in and just very carefully snip off the plant that I don't want and always remove it so you reduce the chance of fungus growing and in that way you don't worry about have to worry about damaging the neighbor's roots this close-up shows just how slowly Canterbury bells grow at the beginning believe it or not the seedling is two and a half months old this is why I think it's best to start them indoors in pots to protect them from the insects that can easily kill small plants that grow this slowly it's the first of May and the Canterbury bells have finally gotten big enough to transplant into the garden and to be large enough to withstand the attacks of the cutworms and all of the other nasties that are going to be after them all we have to do now is keep them well watered and wait 11 months and as unlikely as it may seem this plant will be 3 feet tall and covered with some of the most beautiful blossoms you've ever seen because Canterbury bells are a cool weather plant growing them in my location the high desert or any place that's very hot and very dry can be challenging one thing you can do until the plants get larger is to cover them with a piece of hardware cloth covered with a handkerchief or a piece of white material this lets and light through for them to grow but provides a little bit of shade to help them through the hots first summer they bloom in spring before the summer gets hot so they'll be okay the second gear it's now the middle of November and this is typical for how big a Canterbury Bell will grow in its first season of growth this plant has survived five nights where the temperatures got down to the low 20s and it's still very lush and green and this is a good indicator for just how Hardy these plants can be it's now the end of February and typical for my high desert location the Canterbury bells are starting to come out of their winter dormancy and you can see the fresh light green growth here you can also see the burn marks from three months of below freezing weathers almost every night but Canterbury bells are remarkably Hardy so they should do fine some will grow like this with many shoots that grow up and flower others will have a single large stalk as much as I admire Canterbury bells I'll be the first to admit that the basic platform leaves a lot to be desired the biggest problem are the side shoots which tend to grow out and then curve up because the stems are so succulent they tend to fall over and if they twist the stem can be lost this problem is exacerbated by the fact that the joint where the stem meets the the main crown of the plant is extremely brittle if you water overhead with sprinklers the weight of the water on the leaves can be enough even if this plant is fully hydrated to break these off I find that there's two things that are very important to prevent that from happening first of all create a very wide deep watering basin and water the plants very thoroughly even when the weather is mild say 75 to 75 degrees during the day these can use twelve to fourteen gallons of water a week so keep them well watered the other solution to prevent these from breaking off is to use a cage to support them I find what works the best is dark green thin wire border fencing that's about eighteen inches tall I cut it down the side about five feet long bend it into a circle and then tie the ends together after I've wrapped it around the plant and then make sure that all of the branches are upright and well supported this will go a long way towards solving all of the stem breakage problems Canterbury bells can have as they grow you'll notice the Canada very bells taking on one of two forms the first is the large rosette usually there will be one or two large open areas that'll spread out and dominate the plant you'll still have a few shoots off the side but these will be the dominant features many times what will happen with this is you'll end up with a single long thick stalk with most of the flowers on it here's the other type instead of a single large crown what you'll get are dozens of small shoots this will produce a more bulk bushy sort of plant and will be covered with smaller stalks but it'll still produce a lot of flowers either way you're looking forward to a lot of good color here we are on the 29th of April on a particularly breezy evening and as you can see finally after 15 months the Canterbury bells are starting to put out buds now when they open when they bloom each one is about the size of a ping-pong ball and as you can see there's one here here here here here here here and it goes on down the stem so when these bloom and often they will bloom all at once this will these will be a huge burst of color as the buds grow they do something interesting they'll stay like this for a week or so and then all of a sudden in just one day or so they'll lengthen out to an inch inch and a half and start to color up and then they just burst with color within just two or three days and as you can see here's my first bud just a few days ago it was this small and it suddenly has grown that way this isn't completely open yet that'll take another day or so but we're on the March and this looks like it's going to be a good year less than 12 hours later the flower was completely open the first of many many hundreds the single plant will produce each plant will produce between six and a dozen main spikes such as this and each of those will produce many dozens of side shoots that can extend over a foot to either side when staking the plants I like to space the stakes out as far as possible so that the flowers aren't crowded and don't get crushed I had planned on waiting until the Canterbury bells were in full flower to start my video of what they look like when they're at their best but I live in the high desert of Southern California and if you've heard of global warming well we are Ground Zero it's the middle of May and we're already having temperatures that we normally don't have until the middle of June middle of July and some of them are starting to suffer Canterbury bells are cool weather crops that deal with a lot of shade very well and even though I have them planted against a west-facing wall so they shade in the afternoon they are starting to will so I wanted to get something in case they completely collapse fairly soon this is a light magenta one we have a more traditional darker blue one here so far I haven't seen any of the cup and saucer types these are all the regular Bell types but you can get an idea of what's coming because this is just a few flowers there are hundreds and hundreds more that if you have to open let's look at some of the other colors here's some very nice Pink's when they open at first they actually look quite white they color up more the older they get this is very nice this is very light sky-blue here's another dark blue one and you can see one of the problems with Canterbury bells and that is the blooms are so heavy that many times even with staking the smaller stems of flowers will slowly bend over and hang down like this it can look attractive but if the flowers get too heavy it'll actually break off unfortunately because this is the last plant in the bed I didn't have room to space out the stakes so it's a little crowded but it's putting on a pretty good display anyway dark colors like this you can expect the blooms to last a week each lighter colors like the paints and the white can easily last up to two weeks and speaking of the Pink's here we go we've also got some pale violets over there very attractive finally we have this very attractive light magenta it's interesting because while most Canterbury bells have five lobes these can have up to seven Canterbury bells are wonderful plants because while they take a year and a half to bloom when they do bloom they're just so outrageously beautiful that they're irresistible thank you for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it