I am growing both Tornado Mixed colors and Summer Showers mixed colors this year. My Tornado have done well with 90% germination but my Summer Showers only did 50% and they were uneven in emergence. My seed was fresh and marked as to having 87% germination when tested. I have more seed and am planting this later today. Anyone else tried Summer Showers from seed?

Blueflint

I just germinated a packet of Burpee Summer Showers mix with a 100% success rate. I do all of my geranium germination in damp paper towels, stacked in a sealed container.

I put one variety in each towel labeled with a permanent marker, and stack them all in a single container. When I check each day for sprouting I also rearrange the stack of towels.

This year, out of approximately 150 seeds of various varieties I've got 121 now in soil, and only 12-16 seeds left in the container which have until Sunday to sprout. Try that and see if you get better results; just be sure not to use too much water.

You must have had something right if a couple of them germinated. Pick those out of there and pot them up and then put the container with the remaining seeds in a plastic bag or cover them somehow and put them in a warm place like on top of the refrigerator, or on a cookie cooling rack on top of a heat vent and see if more don't come up. I've found that all geraniums seem to come up in flushes.

I got the summer showers mix from swallowtail. I have about 10 or so healthy looking plants which is good since I ordered 10 seeds and got 13. I put them on the heat mat and they came up in less than a week.

when I want to start any new new seeds that Im not sure how to start I go onto the Ball Seed website or Stoke seeds. they give great detailed info, from seed to bloom. As a small commercial greenhouse operator I count on those sites. There is also a book called (Seed to Bloom) I cant recall author though. Also seed companies do warranty their seeds. If they fail to grow You can get your money back. They just don't advertise it. Not sure if seed catalogs do the same, I don't see why they wouldn't.