Grow Lobelia From Seed | Sowing Trailing Lobelia Seeds || Budget Gardening

This is a perfect spiller in a container pot! It’s also a great plant towards the front of a flower bed. Let’s chat about the trailing Lobelia erinus! It’s early March and I’m about 10.5 weeks from my average last frost date. Learn how easy it is to grow trailing lobelia from seed! In this video, I show you how to plant / sow lobelia seeds. Propagating plants by seed is a budget friendly way to save money in the garden – and it’s fun!

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hey budget gardeners VCA here join me today as we sew the seeds for trailing lobilia so let’s [Music] go I live in New Hampshire I Garden in zone 5B my average last frost date is May 15th today is March 4th I’m about 10 and 1 12 weeks away from my average last frost date when it comes to seed starting I’m trying to be very mindful very careful when I start my seeds it’s always good to look at the back of your seed packet and start your seeds accordingly but I also like to double check on the internet and check other sites to make sure I’m starting my seeds at the right time because sometimes the back of the seed packet is not always right I also keep track of when I start my seeds in a spreadsheet on Google Drive I really recommend keeping track of when you start what seeds so that the next year and the year after you can make adjustments accordingly I’ve definitely Fallen victim to starting some seeds too early I’ve also sometimes started my seeds too late so I like to modify that year after year so I can really hone in on the right time to start different seeds in terms of trailing Lilia you want to start those seeds around 8 to 10 weeks before your average last frost date some sites will say 10 to 12 weeks before your last frost date I’ve tried that and unfortunately what I find is the plants start blooming and they get way too big too early so for me personally I found starting these seeds between 8 to 10 week weeks before my last frost date is better when it comes to seed starting you always want to base it on whatever your last frost date is you don’t want to base it on your hardiness Zone after all hardiness Zone just tells you different plants that are Hardy in your area in other words which pennial will survive and which ones won’t during the coldest parts of your winter but for seed starting you look at your average last frost date and then you count backwards from there if you don’t know what your average last frost a is you can do an internet search type in something like what is my average last frost date and then put in your ZIP code or put in the area that you live in another way you can do it is go to the website down enter in your zip code and it will give you an idea of your average last frost date there’s also a map on that site go to the map find your location and you’ll be able to find your date that way I’ve been growing trailing lobilia from seed for a number of years now in fact for the last many years I’ve grown it from seed that I’ve collected myself I’ve made videos showing you my process for collecting the lobilia seeds and let me tell you they are super tiny and not only are the seeds tiny they are very slow to germinate lobilia seeds germinate after 2 to 3 weeks you want to make sure you’re keeping those seeds moist while you’re waiting for them to germinate you don’t want them to dry out when I start lobilia indoors I definitely need to pot up the seedling at least a few times and during that time I also might pinch back my just to make a bushier plant I then start hardening off my plants slowly as my average last Frost dat approaches since I collect my own seeds I end up with a slight variation in color for my traan lobilia I’m okay with that every year I save so much money not only growing lobilia from seed by collecting my own seeds year after year I really enjoyed this plant up along my front walkway it complements nicely with white sweet alysum snap dragons and even dalas all of which I’ve grown from seed before I also have enjoyed the mobilia in my old Arbor V bed in there I usually also have white alysum along with pink vinka and even colius more plants that I like to grow from seed that I’ve collected my own yard trailing lobilia even makes a great impact in different types of pots and containers I’m excited to show you seeds that I purchased for this year so let’s get planting here are the seeds that I bought recently from a garden center close to my house you can see for the price $2.69 that’s not bad and from what I read on the Botanical interest website there are a ton of seeds in this packet all Botanical interest seeds have information on the front of the packet as well as on the back of the packet there’s additional information on the inside of the packet personally I just like to go to their website because there’s also a lot of great information out there the reason why I bought seeds this year for trailing lobilia is because I don’t have this pinkish red color of lobilia and I’d really like it and then hopefully I won’t ever have to buy lobilia seeds again so you can see there’s some light blue there’s dark blue there’s there’s these shades of red and there’s even some whitish colored lobilia in here here’s some additional information on the back of the packet here you can see days to emerge 15 to 20 days and you want to press lightly into the surface which means the seeds do need light to germinate the recommended temperature for germination was a little lower on the seed packet but when I did a little bit of additional research I did see that the lobilia seeds could benefit from a Seedling heat mat so that’s why I’m going to be using one for these seeds and then I have other packets of lobilia that I’ve collected and there you can see there aren’t many in these two packets honestly when it comes to sewing the seeds I’m going to probably sew them in three sections one section will have these seeds another section will have these and then a third section I’m just going to mix these two together here I have some seed starting mix I like to make my own seed starting mix and I’ll put a link to a video down in the description it’s basically two parts of Pete Moss but you can use cocoa core to one part of very fine vermiculite and then I add a small pinch of dolomite lime which helps offset the pH of the Pete Moss I also poured boiling hot water on my seed starting mix you want to use premoistened seed starting mix but also the boiling hot water helps kill any possible fungus knat eggs that might be in here when I squeeze my seed starting mix notice there’s no water dripping out but when I let go it’s holding its form and that’s the right consistency that you want for your seed starting or potting mix in a lot of my seed starting videos you’ll see that I use seed starting mix I like to use seed starting mix when it comes to very small seeds now if I was sewing a much larger seed like a sunflower I would totally be fine with just directly sewing it into potting mix but I want my little teeny tiny seeds to have a better rate of germination and I find with seed starting mix there’s not as much big material in here and it just seems a lot lighter a lot fluffier I like to use restaurant takeout containers because honestly they’re free to me and they make wonderful little green houses in fact this one has little vent holes in it which is wonderful because it in case it gets too hot in there and I did make holes in the bottom of the container because you want to bottom water your seedlings you don’t ever want to water them from above because that can introduce all sorts of problems so I’m going to go ahead and add my seed starting mix to my container and now I’m going to press on the seed starting mix I want to take out any air pockets might be in there I don’t want to press too hard because I don’t want to compact the seed starting mix too much when it comes to seed starting I do like to use Garden markers because I find that they don’t wear off as easily as a pen or a Sharpie I always like to label the seeds that I’m sewing and not only that I like to put the day that I sewed the seeds just to keep track of everything and I’ve added the labels here I also put dividers in the middle just so I know which seeds are in which place I mentioned earlier that Botanical interest keeps a lot lot of good instructions in the inside of their seed packet so you can see that and then inside of the seed packet is another packet that holds the seeds in it I was curious I wondered if Botanical interest seeds were pelleted and they do not appear to be don’t be afraid when you see seeds like that they are very tiny and I’m going to show you them in a second you can see that I am not going to be sewing all the seeds that are in this packet there’s a couple of reasons number one since the seeds are not pelleted they should still be fine for me to use next year and number two for whatever reason if these seeds do not germinate for me I want to have some backup seeds on hand that I can sew again within another few weeks and that’s a nice closeup of what the seeds look like I can’t tell you how many are there but I can tell you there are way more than I’m probably going to need so if I have an overabundance of them I can definitely add some as part of my backyard plant nursery sales when it comes to this plant I really do enjoy it in the areas of my yard that get a lot of sun so I prefer prer to sew a lot of this seed for that reason because it just is such a striking color such a striking plant I feel I feel like the seeds get a bad wrap because they’re tiny and I feel like the plant gets a bad wrap because if you let it dry out it just dies a lot of times you’ll find this plant in a hanging basket and when you buy it in the hanging basket it looks beautiful and then you wonder all of a sudden why did it die out again it’s a plant that just needs a lot of water I don’t typically put this plant in a hanging basket for two reasons first of all I don’t have areas in my yard that get full sun where the hanging baskets are and another reason is I don’t have my hanging baskets set up on drip irrigation and there’s no way I would be out there watering those hanging baskets as often as these little seedlings would need it and not just the seedlings the adult plants would need that water as well I’m usually pretty good about putting the dates of when I collected my seeds but I didn’t do that but I know that these seeds are not that old and the seeds are very fine they’re mixed in there along with the nonseed material so when it comes to sewing this we’re just going to be sewing all of it the seed plus the nonseed material simply because the seeds are so tiny this is called Faith In seed collecting you just have to trust me on this there are seeds mixed in here I promise and I’ll show you probably in like a week or two what they look like once they germinate it definitely saves me a lot of space initially when it comes to sewing my seeds very heavily in something like a restaurant takeout container and when you have tiny little seeds like this it’s almost impossible to sew them in something like a six cell pack I feel again if the seeds were pelleted then it’s fine you can sew tiny seeds that are pelleted in a six cell pack but otherwise personally I think it’s much easier to start off in something like this a much larger container these are tiny I’m going to sew these and then the next thing that I’m going to do is I’m going to show you how to go about pressing the seeds into the seed starting mix and why we do that look how small the seeds are they really are tiny now we’re going to go ahead and we’re just going to press in our seeds we want to make sure that the seeds make good contact with the seed starting mix that’s really important because once the seeds start start sprouting or germinating The Roots will come out and they’re going to be looking for that soil so if you don’t do this step what happens is the seeds germinate and the roots are just kind of on the top but they don’t really anchor into the soil that’s why you really want to make sure there’s good contact Happening Here you see that I put dividers here and I’ve mentioned this in other videos I’m okay because these seeds are so tiny if by mistake a seed from the this area went into that area it’s fine I mean they’re all eventually going to bloom for me and I’ll see what their colors are anyway I’m okay multi-wing different colors of this trailing lobilia in one container like this you don’t want to be sewing something that grows at a different rate in in the same type of container it just sometimes can cause problems so that’s good we pressed in the seeds they need light to germinate and now they’ll get that because the seeds are still pretty much on the surface Sur of the soil here and I’m just going to use this small hand pump sprayer I like to add a little additional water on top of the seeds just so that they really press into the seed starting mix and have a better chance of germination and now I’m very gently giving this a small mist of water remember the seed starting mix was already wet but it’s still a good idea to just give it a little bit of water very lightly I’m now going to add this cover notice that it’s clear and that’s good because since the seeds need light to germinate light can still come through this clear cover and another reason we’re adding this is for this cover to act as a humidity Dome and what it does is it keeps those seeds nice and moist if I don’t add this on there those seeds are going to start drying out very fast and since they take a long time to germinate we don’t want that so that’s why we’re putting this on if you don’t have something like this you can use clear plastic wrap or anything else that’s clear that will allow light to come in and that will hold the humidity in there now I’m placing the restaurant takeout container on a Seedling heat mat which stays on 24 hours a day in order to get the 70 to 75° Fahrenheit range and notice I have my grow lights here these are turned on 16 hours a day from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. remember be patient it might take 2 to 3 weeks to see some sort of germination once I see good germination I will remove this container off of the heat mat but I’ll make sure that they’re still under the grow lights because they will need that nice strong strong light thinning out and potting up will be done as soon as I have my first set of true leaves remember when it comes to starting seeds especially tiny seeds that are surface sewn you don’t want those seeds to dry out and that is especially true when you have seeds that take a long time to ger germinate such as lobilia even though the humidity Dome keeps things nice and moist if I feel like the seed starting mix is starting to dry out I’ll just slly miss the top layer of the mix just to make sure it doesn’t dry out however once those seeds have germinated you don’t want to be spritzing the top with water anymore at that point you want to start bottom watering your seedlings I’ll be sure to bring you along once the seeds have germinated and then you my process for pricking out the seedlings potting them up fertilizing them pinching them back and then eventually getting them out in my landscape let me know in the comments if you’ve ever started trailing lobilia from seed and if so what are some of your tips or secrets with growing this plant I highly encourage you to also start collecting your own seeds you really will save so much money year after year I have a whole playlist that shows you how to collect the seeds of different plants I’ll be sure to add a link to that in the description below and until the next video make it a great day with gardening [Music] [Music]