‘Pampas Plume’ Celosia is an easy-to-grow annual that spices up the middle of the border. The plants grow about 28-36″ tall with multi-branched, fuzzy plumes in various shades of orange, red, cream, pink, gold and bronze.
‘Pampas Plume’ is easy to start from seed. I sow my seeds indoors in mid-March for a late-May planting outdoors, but you can also plant seeds directly in the garden once the chance of frost has passed in the spring.
My plants did very well this year, but I came up a little short on the color lottery this time around. When I’ve grown this cultivar in the past, I’ve usually had mostly bright colors like orange, red and gold. This time most of my plants were in muted shades of cream or light-pink.
That’s always the risk you take when you grow a mix. Oh do I ever miss the days when you could buy individual colors of just about any annual, but that’s now a rare opportunity.
I did have one plant that was purplish-red, but the rest were very pale and understated. I would’ve appreciated more color, but other than that my plants were disease-free and pest-free and needed little attention from me. You can’t beat that.
The plumes last for most of the summer. Eventually the little flowers dry out and open up to expose fresh seeds. A few of those seeds may even self-sow the following year and give you a nice little surprise when they pop up and start blooming in the middle of summer.