hi this is yolanda vanveen and next we're going to talk about one of my favorite flowers cosmos so now to figure out how to grow cosmos flowers you need to find out where they're native now cosmos are native to Mexico so they like dry arid hot hot conditions so you wouldn't want to plant them in wet clay and lots of compost and really wet soggy conditions they do much better in extreme heat and poor soil and lots and lots of water but dry them out in between completely because if they stay wet in any way they'll rot right out even in the middle of summer now cause and also an annual so that means you have to start them every year you don't just plant them one year they don't come back the next year you've got to start them in the spring each year because they freeze out in the winter if you live in a cold climate if you live in a warm climate a lot of times they will come back from year to year just from the plant itself so when you're starting the seeds okay so as you notice there are just small seeds and you want to plant those about a half a inch to a quarter inch deep and you can put them right into the soil or you can put them right into a container or you can start them in seed trays first which is one of the easier ways to do it and I like to put just a couple per seed tray and then you want to cover that up just barely like quarter-inch half an inch and whether you start them in a seed tray or you start them in the ground so whether you start them right into the soil or you start them in a seed tray when you water and make sure not to use a heavy stream try to get a mr. or put some cloth on top so that it just drips down and then it's not a heavy stream and that the seeds are just washed away and with Kosmos you want to put them in full set and they've got to be in raised beds with good drainage they don't want to sit and muck at all and put them in someplace where they're going to get as hot as they possibly can get and they will come up and they'll bloom in the summer through the fall and a lot of times as they look ratty too I'll trim them down just a little bit as the blooms bloom out a lot of times they'll shoot keep shooting up even more blooms now you can collect the seeds in the fall once they're done blooming and then turn around save them all winter and start them again in the spring so you don't have to go out and buy new seeds now cosmos are a great addition to your flower garden