I was admiring the seedlings on the greenhouse benches yesterday. The image above showcases a selection of streps cultivated from our Dragon Seed – featuring a delightful variety of colours and patterns that you expect from Streptocarpus. Each plant is exciting and unique with a uniform habit.  Here's a quick guide on how to grow Streps from seeds.

Streptocarpus seed is very fine. A seed packet will have a sachet in it in which the seed will appear as a pinch of dust - even though there could be over 50 seeds.
Put some good proprietary seed sowing compost into a seed tray, water it and allow the surplus water to drain off. Carefully open the seed sachet. An easy way to sow the seed is to tip it onto a sheet of white paper folded once to give a v shape. Tap this gently over the compost to spread the seed out. Do not cover the seed with compost. Place a sheet of glass or polythene over the seed tray. Keep the tray in a warm light situation; a temperature of 18ºC to 20ºC is perfect. If you have a propagator this will be ideal for giving the seeds the right environmental conditions. It will keep the humidity high and a heated one will give a constantly correct temperature. Under no circumstance allow the compost to dry. It is a good idea to give the compost a light misting each day.

After about 10 - 14 days, tiny green leaves will become visible. Keep the seedlings covered until they are a few millimetres in size, then gradually open the cover a little at a time over a period of several days so that they become inured to the normal atmosphere.
Leave the seedlings in the seed tray until they are at least 5mm in size then prick them out into a small pot of a good proprietary peat based potting compost. Alternatively you can use a Jiffy Seven plug, which can be potted up when the plant is several centimetres in size. Plants should flower in about six months from a spring sowing.