One of the bright spots of my 2014 flowerbeds was Cosmos ‘Pink Pop Socks’. The dark-pink single and double flowers grow 24-28 inches tall and can be started from seed outside after all chances of frost have passed. ‘Pink Pop Socks’ was one of the best-performing cosmos I’ve ever grown. The plants bloomed all summer long into fall. Usually cosmos plants poop out on me in August. They dry up and shrivel away—exhausted from churning out so many flowers.
I was so pleased with this cultivar’s performance that I decided to try sibling ‘White Pop Socks’ last summer. While you can sow the seeds directly in the garden, I started my plants inside about 4 weeks before my last frost date.
Perhaps it was the weather or maybe I got an inferior batch of seeds, but both cultivars struggled. In 2014, ‘Pink Pop Socks’ started blooming in early June and just kept on going until frost. Last summer my plants—which were started at the same time as plants the previous year—didn’t bloom until mid-July. ‘White Pop Socks’ waited even longer. I didn’t see the first flowers until the end of July. The plants were healthy and in fact grew much taller than the advertised 28 inches, but they just didn’t want to bloom.
There were no issues with insects or animal pests and I didn’t apply any more fertilizer than I normally do, so I’m not sure why there was such a difference in behavior from one year to the next with this series.
Curiosity compels me to try them again in 2016 to see who wins the tiebreaker—the champs that bloom like crazy until frost or the chumps that send up lots of foliage but are skimpy with the flowers.