Nigella (love-in-a-mist)

About Nigella (love-in-a-mist)

Love-in-a-mist is an easy, old-fashioned annual with blue, white, pink or lavender flowers sitting in a lacy collar of thread-like bracts above fennel-like leaves. After the flowers come puffy, striped seed pods that are just as pretty fresh or dried. The black seeds sold for cooking as nigella or black cumin come from a cousin, Nigella sativa, not this garden flower (Wisconsin).

Grown from seed as a cool-season annual in every zone (NC State lists 2-11). It takes frost but fades in hot weather, so sow in fall where winters are mild and in early spring elsewhere (Wisconsin, NC State).

When to plant

Timing is counted from your average last spring frost (and first fall frost). Sow & Tell works out the actual dates for your ZIP code.

Sow seed about 1/8 inch deep right where it will grow as soon as the soil can be worked in spring, or in fall (NC State prefers fall). It sprouts in 2-3 weeks and starts blooming about three months after sowing, so days to harvest count from seeding. A long taproot makes it a poor transplant; if you start it indoors, use plantable pots 4-6 weeks ahead. Sow again every 3 weeks for flowers all season, and thin seedlings to 8-10 inches (Wisconsin).

Soil

Fertile, well-drained soil kept evenly moist; it handles clay, loam or sand (Wisconsin, NC State).

Give it fertile, well-drained soil; no extra fertilizer schedule is given by the sources we found, so follow a soil test.

Feeding

Don't try to transplant big seedlings; the long taproot sulks when moved. Spring sowings in hot-summer areas give small plants that fade fast in heat.

Harvest

Blooms from late spring into midsummer for about one to two months (NC State, Wisconsin). Deadheading stretches the bloom but you lose the pods; for drying, cut pods while the stripes still show, or once they feel firm and papery, and hang them upside down somewhere dry, dark and airy (Wisconsin, Iowa State).

Varieties (11)

Extension sources document 11 named varieties and series; few give sizes.

Good neighbors

Lamb's ear, Dusty miller, Strawflower, Bachelor's button (cornflower), Gomphrena (globe amaranth)

Wisconsin suggests these for looks: silver leaves set off the blue flowers, and other everlastings dry well alongside it. No one has tested it for pest control.

In the kitchen

Pets: Not listed by the ASPCA (we found no love-in-a-mist or Nigella entry), so we can't call it pet-safe; discourage pets from chewing it.