I'm no expert, but what your doing sounds about right.

I collected the seed pods from my geraniums last fall, threw them into a ceramic pot with lid on my counter, forgot about them untill this march. Opened the lid and they are similar....white puffs.
I threw them ontop of soil in a pot, kept them moist by spritzing daily, and now have seedlings growing.

As long as you provide the right growing conditions as you were speaking about, you should get some germination.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Tonia

Germination is not difficult. Your seed saving is too much work. I just cut off ripe seed heads into a brown paper shopping bag with the top left open and store it in a dry place until I feel like separating the seed from the chaff. Al

Yea, I probably went overboard but I'm technically an engineer by trade and there's an old adage that...

"Engineers will over-complicate anything until they run out of time or money or both..." ;-p

Thanx again for the reality check and any additional advice on germination would be more than appreciated. I'm still doing research on the lighting requirements / etc. needed...

This may help:
http://www.backyardgardener.com/tm.html
http://www.tomclothier.hort.net
This should be the perfect time to start them.
Barbie

It is in July 2010 now, and I harvested some seeds from pink Gerbera Daisies which are living outdoors in the garden during warmer days and indoors in pots during winter for 3 years. They're known as annual, but when you keep them warm enough they grow like perennial and the flowers keep coming back! When they were transplanted outdoors they were popular among bumble bees and so I could get them pollinated and harvest seeds!

I found that not all the seeds from one head of flowers are ripe. Let the head dry on the stalk and become fluffy like that of dandelion puff-ball (not that fluffy though) and search for a bit stouter seeds around the petals. Ripe seeds are rare (maybe around 50th or 100th of total?) but are definitely there if pollinated. And maybe this is why flower shops keep telling us that growing daisy from seeds is near impossible and we'd better get flowers or whole plant from the shop.

Germination is really easy. I succeeded in germinating them in a pot filled with quality potting mix, kept moist by spraying water every day, placed by a sunny window, with room temperature around 70-74 F, within a week.

Hope there are more people who succeed in growing Gerbera Daisies from seeds!

- Ryu

Hello, It's now 2018 :-)

I'm wondering if you can make recommendations of how to store the seeds? I'm in the process of collecting them, but not sure how to store them: dark sunlight? warm? cool? Thank you!