Soon. You could also pinch these plants back to keep them nice and bushy and make the center stalks really strong so they don't flop all over the place. I know you are impatient to see them bloom but it is well worth it. You will get many more blooms pinching. Deadheading is important as well. They are very reliable and once they start blooming you will have blooms till late fall.

linlily - I harvested seeds from my established Jacob's Ladder this year and will winter sow them to get more plants. I'd like to have a fairly good-sized clump of them for the impact they make in early spring. The seedpods ripen gradually. I kept a close eye on them & harvested seeds as soon as I found the tiny pods open so I could grow more. My DIL has a nice-size established plant that got me interested in growing them. One feature I especially like is they need ZERO attention or tending throughout the growing season. Reliably perennial + low-maintenance = my kind of perennial. Swallowtail offers seeds of a white-blooming cultivar.

It varies by location. Mine in full sun,elevated location against a west wall will bloom in early mid May but a neighbor's plants that only get a few mid day hours of sun bloom a month later.

Doubtless much stock is planted without paying much attention to the condition of its roots. If somebody's not aware that deformed roots are a minus, of course they're going to think the plants they've bought were great, if they like the way the tops look. A common behavior when shopping is to pick out plants with big tops. These will also be the ones most likely to be rootbound. "Containerized materials, especially those in gallon sized pots, often have serious root problems as a result of poor potting-up techniques. Potbound plants exhibit circling root systems, which if not corrected become woodier and more troublesome the older they get. Eventually these circling root systems become girdling roots, which can lead to the early death of otherwise healthy trees and shrubs. At transplant time, a more aggressive approach to root preparation can discover potentially fatal root flaws. Circling roots, J-hooked roots, knotted roots, and other misshapen roots can often be corrected by careful pruning. In this manner itÂs possible to remove those root problems before they threaten the survival of your shrub or tree." Here is a link that might be useful: The Myth of Fragile Roots