'Best Find' Phacelia

Phacelia tanacetafolia

Origin: Oregon

Improvement status: Cultivar

Seeds per packet: ~175

Germination tested 01/2024: 59%

Life cycle: Annual

Phacelia is a phenomenal honey plant, a beautiful flower, and a favorite of pollinators of all sorts. We're excited to be offering this great strain from Frank Morton & Wild Garden Seeds.

Here's what Frank says about it:

"We looked at 5 different strains and varieties of Phacelia at Avoca Farm this year, comparing growth habits, flowering fecundity, seed head size and conformation, and smothering biomass. The best kind turned out to be the one we had purchased from a grower locally years ago, unnamed. We named it.

Phacelia makes a smothering cover that can be employed almost any time of the growing season to preclude weeds, sequester nitrogen and calcium, and deeply penetrate and texturize soil. Easily killed by disc, tillage, or cultivation, the residues are fast rotting and give the surface a light open texture. Allowed to flower, an acre of Phacelia attracts every kind of bee for miles around, and literally buzzes with beneficial contentment."