Lobelia: growing from seeds, when to plant seedlings

Content

1 Interesting facts about delicate flowers
- 1.1 Variety selection
2 How to get a unique flower in your garden
3 Conclusion

Neat lobelia bushes are found everywhere in modern landscape design: they decorate flower beds, alpine slides, hanging flowerpots and decorative flowerpots. This flower is universal, and it has a lot of delicate colors - from pink to violet and purple. Working with lobelia is a pleasure, but growing this plant in a temperate climate is quite difficult. The biggest difficulty is in propagating the flower, because it reproduces with tiny seeds that look like dust.

How to adapt a heat-loving flower to a temperate climate, how to grow lobelia from seeds and when is the best time to plant its seedlings in the ground - all the intricacies of the planting process at home will be discussed in the article. Here you can also find recommendations for choosing a lobelia variety and learn more about this plant.

Interesting facts about delicate flowers

Lobelia, according to most botanists, belongs to the Campanulaceae species (although some, nevertheless, classify it as a separate plant species - Lobeliaceae).This flower is native to the subtropics, but today it is distributed on almost all continents.

In nature, lobelia is a perennial; in colder climates it is grown as an annual plant. About three hundred species of this plant have medicinal properties and grow in nature. Lobelia is mainly used to treat pulmonary diseases. This flower is actively used in pharmacology for the production of tablets and tinctures.

Attention! Lobelia has been cultivated since the end of the nineteenth century. Today, about twenty species of cultivated flowers with larger buds of various colors are known.

The description of the plant looks like this:

perennial flower;
has branching thin herbaceous stems;
bushes are spherical, compact;
leaves are elongated, lanceolate, arranged in pairs;
stems branch from the very roots;
the height of the flower depends on its type (the dwarf variety grows only up to 20 cm, shoots of erect varieties can grow up to 30 cm, but climbing lobelia is grown as an ampelous plant and has a stem length of up to 50 cm);
the length of the pedicels is only 2 cm;
flowers bilabial axillary, small;
The colors of the flower can be any: white, blue, blue, purple, pink, lilac, red or multi-colored;
Lobelia blooms from June to September;
The fruit of the flower is a capsule with numerous seeds.

Important! The germination of lobelia seeds lasts for three years.

Variety selection

In Russia, lobelia is grown mainly as an annual plant. Therefore, it is better to choose a variety of this flower with a one-year growing season. Landscape designers consider the following types to be the most beautiful and spectacular:

Erinus

They are called hedgehog, border or, simply, blue. This type of lobelia can have several forms, differing in size and shape of the bush (dwarf, compact, erect, climbing and spreading). The most famous varieties of the Erinus species are Reggata Rose and Reggata Blue (blooming in pink and blue, respectively), Riviera Sky Blue, which has sky blue flowers.

Lobelia the Strong

Outwardly it is very similar to Erinus, but its bushes are rougher. The stems are thicker, the leaves are larger and fleshier, the inflorescences have a larger diameter and can be colored blue or purple, and there is always a white spot inside the flower.

Ricardi Ampelnaya

It is a hybrid, so it can only be propagated by cuttings. The lashes of this variety of lobelia are more spreading and powerful than those of Erinus, growing up to 35 cm in length. The inflorescences can have a diameter of up to two centimeters; the flowers are painted lilac or white.

Lobelia Fiery or Brilliant

It is considered erect, its shoots stretch up to 75 cm. Depending on the variety, the leaves of the flower can turn green or red. The best representative of the species is the Queen Victoria variety with large scarlet flowers and stems up to one and a half meters long.

Gherardi

It is unique in that it can withstand frost down to -29 degrees, therefore it is grown as a perennial even in the coldest regions of the country. The height of the bushes is about 120 cm, the inflorescences are collected in large spikelets, the color is purple. The most popular variety is considered to be Lobelia Vedrariensis.

There are dozens more species and hundreds of varieties of lobelia - every gardener will be able to find something most suitable for themselves. Before choosing a flower variety, you should decide on the planting location.After all, the bushes of these flowers differ quite greatly, so completely different types are suitable for flowerpots and hanging flowerpots, for example.

How to get a unique flower in your garden

Lobelia is a beautiful flower, but rather capricious. In order for its cultivation to be successful and its flowering to be abundant, the following conditions must be created:

loose soil, light and not too fertile (loams and sandstones are perfect);
the area should be well lit by the sun and be warm;
the flower loves moisture, so it needs to be provided with regular watering;
fertilizing with mineral complexes is necessary, but it must be strictly dosed;
It is necessary to improve the tillering of lobelia by trimming adult bushes and pinching seedlings.

Proper planting of seeds and proper care are the key to lush flowering and beautiful flower beds.

Planting seedlings

Sowing lobelia seeds is complicated by the fact that they are very small. The flower sprouts will be just as tiny, so it is difficult to care for them, pick them up and replant them in a permanent place - all this requires extreme care on the part of the grower.

To decide when to sow lobelia for seedlings, you need to decide whether the flowers will be additionally illuminated. If there are special lamps in the house, then you can start sowing seeds as early as January. When the gardener intends to use only natural light, it is better to postpone sowing the seeds at least until the last days of February. And then, in cloudy weather, it is better to place a lamp near the container with seedlings, since the flower very quickly stretches and weakens from lack of light.

Advice! The optimal time for sowing lobelia is from the end of February and throughout March.

Flowers sown in March and grown under natural light will be stronger and healthier, will form powerful, abundantly flowering bushes, and will provide immunity to various diseases (including blackleg).

Sowing rules

The labor-intensive process of growing lobelia seedlings must begin with preparing the seeds. Since the seeds of this flower are dusty, they should be mixed with dry sand - this will ensure uniformity of sowing.

The following actions of the florist:

Soil preparation. This can be either purchased soil for flower seedlings or a self-prepared mixture of turf soil, peat, humus and river sand in equal proportions. If the mixture has high acidity, it is necessary to add lime or dolomite flour, since lobelia prefers neutral soils.
The soil is laid out in a plastic container and compacted a little. Now the soil needs to be watered and left overnight. The container for seedlings is preferably shallow, with drainage holes.
Flower seeds mixed with sand are placed on a clean sheet of paper. The paper is folded into a corner and, with its help, the seeds are scattered over the entire surface of the soil, trying to distribute them evenly.
You should not sprinkle flower seeds, you just need to moisten them by spraying them with a spray bottle. A little manganese or fungicide should be added to the water for initial watering of seedlings to prevent seed rotting.
The container is covered with glass or film and put in a warm place for seed germination.

Advice! To make his work easier, a gardener can purchase granulated lobelia seeds and grow seedlings in peat tablets. This avoids picking flowers.

How to care for seedlings

Every day, glass or film from the container must be removed and wiped dry to prevent condensation from accumulating. After a week or a week and a half, when the lobelia shoots appear, remove the lid from the container. Now you can put the container with lobelia seedlings in a plastic bag and tie its top - you will get a small greenhouse.

Flowers are placed in a well-lit place, but not in direct sunlight. The walls of the “greenhouse” are wiped every day to remove condensation. At this stage, lobelia needs to be watered regularly, not allowing the soil to dry out - the flower really does not like drought.

It is better to water fragile flowers from below, pouring warm water directly into the pan. You can use a syringe or a teaspoon to water lobelia, but when watering from above, mold often forms on the surface of the soil.

Advice! If mold appears in a container with lobelia seedlings, you need to carefully remove it with a spoon and sprinkle the ground with crushed activated carbon or river sand calcined in the oven.

If the flower seeds were not planted in separate peat tablets, the seedlings will have to be picked - divided into individual containers. This process is significantly complicated by the miniature size of the seedlings.

How to pick lobelia:

Before picking, the soil in containers with seedlings must be thoroughly moistened.
Now carefully divide the fused flowers with a coffee spoon into small groups of several plants.
Transfer the group of flowers to an individual container with loose soil.
Lightly compact the soil around the stems and water the seedlings.

Attention! After the dive, the lobelia will quickly grow. When the seedlings grow to three centimeters, they are cut back literally by a couple of millimeters - this will allow the lobelia to bush better in the future.

Landing in the ground

It is necessary to plant lobelia in a permanent place in early June, when the ground is well warmed up and there is no threat of frost. Just as during diving, plants are transferred in groups of several seedlings. Choose a site for planting flowers that is sunny or semi-shaded. The soil there should be loose and moderately nutritious, because lobelia does not like excessive fertilizer (in such conditions the bushes will be lush and flowering will be sparse). But the flower loves moisture, so the soil must hold it well.

The interval between lobelia bushes in group plantings should be 10-15 cm. The soil around the lobelia seedlings is compacted tightly and watered abundantly with settled water.

How to care for flowers

Caring for lobelia should be regular - this flower is quite capricious and demanding. The stages of care are as follows:

regular watering, especially during dry periods. Lobelia does not tolerate drought very well, but excessive moisture can lead to rotting of the stems. In extreme heat, bushes are watered daily, and hanging varieties - twice a day. If the weather is cool and cloudy, watering should be reduced.
Flowers should be fertilized 2-3 times per season. For these purposes, mineral complexes are used; lobelia does not tolerate organic matter well.
During the summer, flower bushes are formed by pruning excess shoots. Experienced gardeners recommend cutting the bush to a height of five centimeters in mid-summer - this will stimulate a new wave of flowering.
At the end of summer you can collect lobelia seeds. To do this, carefully cut the bush and shake it over a sheet of paper. The seeds are then dried and placed in a cool, dark place.
In the fall, the bushes are pulled out by the roots, treating lobelia in the same way as with other annuals.

Important! It is possible to grow lobelia as a perennial plant, even in the Russian climate. To do this, in the winter the bushes are dug up and transferred to a cold greenhouse, and in the spring the flowers are replanted in the flowerbed.

Conclusion

Photos of delicate lobelia are beautiful. This flower is universal: it is suitable for framing flower beds, the first line of borders and ridges, as an ampelous and potted plant. Having decided on the variety, you need to start growing seedlings, because lobelia reproduces only by seeds. This work is painstaking, requiring extreme caution from the grower, but the result is worth it!

More information about planting lobelia flowers for seedlings is described in this video: