I sowed lobelia last year, directly into the raised bed I used to grow cut flowers* and they did quite well, but flowered fairly late in the season and are not really great for cutting, they’re better for baskets or pots. So this year I sowed early under cover, with the aim of using the plants for two large wire hanging baskets which we inherited with the house. I have a vision of these lovely trailing purple flowers decorating the front of our house and making visitors ‘ooh’ appreciatively when they visit.
However. Lobelia seeds and indeed their seedlings are ickle tiny wee things and quite tricky to prick out, as I have discovered! It’s not impossible, and I did manage to transfer most of the delicate little plants from the seed tray in clumps into a slightly bigger modular tray. I’m hoping from here they will grow big enough to then plant into baskets so that they can look beautiful at the front of the house, visitors will ‘ooh’, etc etc… However. Having dragged the wire baskets from the back of the shed to have a good look at them, they are BIG. 60cm each in fact, and I’m pretty sure my little crop of lobelias will only fill one of these at best.
I will definitely keep growing them anyway, they’ll do for a smaller basket or pot – but perhaps in the meantime I might have to invest in some pre-grown bedding plants for the hanging baskets, especially if I want them on display any time soon!
In other garden news, I did the first grass cut of the season – yay! I observed two things:
1) the chickens didn’t freak out as much as I thought they might at the sound of the lawnmower. This is good, as I really didn’t want to have to cut the grass fortnightly during the summer under cover of darkness after they’d gone to bed to avoid scaring them!
2) The grass is in a pretty crappy state. What with scarifying, plus a bit of extra treading around fixing up a chicken run, plus a lot of rain recently, it’s not exactly looking green and lush and is still very mossy. This will be a long-running battle I think, to restore it to a healthy state.
*This sounds impressive, but didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, apart from the cornflowers and a few snapdragons. I am giving it another bash this year and have sowed earlier so hopefully will get better results!
Julianne Robertson 