Proud of this moment.

Purchased Lisianthus seeds on impulse in February after seeing then grown as cut flowers on Instagram. Only after the seeds arrived did I do further research. Everyone was shouting from the rooftops how hard they are to grow from seed; poor germination, need to be sown in January, take ages and ages to grow, need to be babied for months, are incredibly delicate for months. Everyone recommended just buying plugs instead, even flower farms said from seed wasn’t worth the heart ache and that they wouldn’t do it again.

Obviously I was shocked. I was late to plant and just signed up for what seemed like guaranteed failure. But I tried. Sowed them as instructed, and covered the seed trays in cling film. I waited for a very stressful month for any signs of life. But eventually I found my trays with a 100% germination rate. From that point I found myself having to mist them four to five times a day and recovering with cling film before bed because they were so little and dried out so easily. This is where I lost a few. They are indeed delicate and some couldn’t handled even the force of my misting bottle. But it was only eight, four per variety. Out of 25 each that ain’t bad. As they got bigger though I reduced and reduced again how often they got misted, until it was just one time before getting recovered with the film at night. Then last week i realised they had three sets of true leaves, with a fourth on the way. They were no longer seedlings but plug plants. It was time to ween them off! So for the week, I gave them two over head waters for the full week and stopped covering before bed. Then today all fourty-something of them finally have gone out into the cut flower garden. The babying is done, I’m past the hard part of growing these guys, and I can relax again. Was almost certain these would be a fail. ❤️