It’s not as bad as everyone thinks it is

There seems to be a consensus among experienced flower farmers: never start lisianthus from seed. Most growers buy lisianthus plugs (tiny plants) and for good reason. They take around 12 to 16 weeks to grow, and plenty can go wrong in that time. 

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seedJust ten stems of lisianthus Voyage Champagne 3 makes for a huge armful.

 

In fact, I want to start this article all about lisianthus seed starting with an honest reality check. Here on our farm, Moonshot Farm in New Jersey, we started 20,000 lisianthus seeds last winter but only around 6,000 survived. A dire miscommunication between my staff and me led to no one watering the plants for about a week and a pretty major loss. And yet, I still think growing these plants from seed is worth considering, so let’s get into it. Maybe have a back-up plan — more on that later.

The pros

There are a lot of reasons to start your own lisianthus seed. On a philosophical level, it’s a great way to learn your crop. I think you should try starting everything from seed — at least once. You’ll get to know a crop better and have more resilience in case plugs become unavailable. 

On a practical level, relying on plugs limits access to the varieties grown by plug wholesalers. Those are the same varieties and colors that all the other growers have access to. By starting your own seeds, you have access to a much wider range of lisianthus series and colors. There are many unique varieties, but a few we love that are typically only available as seeds are the Chaconne series and Diamond Peach.

Starting from seed also gives you complete control over the growing process and all inputs. We use only organic-allowed inputs like natural fertilizers and botanical pesticides, and it’s great knowing our lisianthus meet those standards. While some large wholesale plug growers are using more sustainable practices, many still use conventional pesticides and other inputs as needed. One note for certified organic growers: all commercially available lisianthus seeds in the U.S. have a pelleted coating that is not NOP-compliant, so certified organic growers likely can’t grow them (check with your certifier). 

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seedThe author’s labor cost formula.

 

We also have better luck keeping our home-grown lisianthus transplants alive than bought-in plugs (this year’s mishap aside). While I don’t think our home-grown plants are necessarily “healthier” than plugs, they are accustomed to our environment and our watering schedule. We find plugs from the wholesaler often have different needs. We’ll sometimes kill them upon arrival from under- or overwatering. We tend to find our homegrown plugs take off faster once in the ground and are less susceptible to disease.

Cost savings is another consideration. A typical 128-cell tray of lisianthus costs about $65 to $75, plus shipping, or about 60 cents per plant. By comparison, we can grow our lisianthus from seed for about 20 cents per plant. The more we grow, the more we save. Tasks like watering and seeding become more cost efficient at higher volumes. 

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seedThe author uses this spreadsheet to calculate how much money she saves on starting lisianthus from seed vs. plugs. Customize the numbers in the green cells with your own farm’s numbers to find the amount of savings for your farm.

 

If you’re only growing a few trays of lisianthus, seed-starting might not be worth the effort; buying plugs may cheaper and easier. But if you’re growing thousands or tens of thousands of plants, seed starting can save you thousands of dollars. 

We use a spreadsheet to calculate all of our seed-starting operating expenses, including labor and utilities; see the sidebar and adjust it to your own growing environment. You can also use it for other crops to help you decide which plugs are worth the cost. Another slow-growing seed we like is eucalyptus. By growing both from seed at the same time, we have more trays to care for, helping bring the overall cost down even further.

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seedA double-sown lisianthus seedling at the stage the author plants out. All photos and images courtesy of the author.

 

A final reason we start lisianthus from seed is to provide year-round work for our employees.  We start lisianthus during the cold, slow days of December and it is a great winter task. Just be sure responsibilities are clearly defined so you don’t have a watering disaster like ours.

 

The cons

The main disadvantage of starting your own lisianthus seeds — and the reason so few growers do it — is time. The plugs take about 12 to 16 weeks to grow out, and during that time need to be tended to daily. This means you can’t take a vacation during that window, unless you have a reliable employee or farm-sitter who can care for the baby plants. 

Because they take so long, lisianthus have a reputation for being difficult to start from seed. In reality, they’re not hard at all, just slow. For the record, I’m not a seed-starting zealot. We buy in lots of plugs at our farm, especially poppies and delphinium which we do find to be tricky starting from seed. But if you can grow a marigold from seed, you can grow a lisianthus. Let’s get into how we grow them.

 

Sowing and germination

Start your lisianthus 12 to 14 weeks before you plan to plant them out. Areas with warm winters can fall-plant. If you’re in a region with a cold winter, I recommend planting out four to six weeks before your last frost in the field, or eight weeks before your last frost in the tunnel. We aim to plant all of our lisianthus out around March 15, so start seeds in mid-December. 

We grow all of our lisianthus plants in 128-cell trays. We find this is the most efficient size, as it allows us to grow many plants, but large enough to skip potting up. They go straight from the 128 tray into the field. 

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seed Planting two plants at 6” spacing saves bed space and time.

 

We double-seed our lisianthus, planting two seeds per cell, and we do not thin them. This enables us to grow twice the number of plants for the same amount of watering and transplanting labor. We find the lisianthus do not mind being crowded at all. We grow many single-stemmed plants using this multi-seeding method, including celosia, cut flower kale, stock, and snapdragons. 

We have used Berger BM2 germination mix with good results, but this year are switching to the compost-based “Fort Lite” from Vermont Compost. I am optimistic that the lisianthus will do well in this mix. We wet the trays before sowing as it’s hard to wet them afterwards without washing the tiny seeds away.

When wetting, we add Rootshield, a biological fungicide, to our seed starting mix. We use this on all seeds that are in trays for more than six weeks. It does a great job of preventing damping off and other fungal issues.

We surface-sow our lisianthus and dust them with a very thin layer of vermiculite — just enough to prevent a crust on the surface without actually burying the seed. Lisianthus come in pelleted form, so use dry hands when handling to avoid melting the pellet. In past years, we have sown each tiny seed by hand. This spring we finally invested in a vacuum seeder and are excited to use it for our lisis as it works great with pelleted seed.

The key to consistent germination is even, frequent moisture. The pellets need to dissolve completely for the germination process to begin. You can use a spray bottle to wet them every day, but we use a small Hudson sprayer, which works quickly on a larger scale. It takes around one to three days to melt the pellets from the seeds.

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seedChaconne Yellow lisianthus is not widely available as plugs but can be started from seed.

 

We grow most of our lisianthus on shelves under basic LED shop lights in our basement, which is at about 66°F to 68°F degrees of ambient heat from our house. This was our original seed-starting set-up before we had a propagation greenhouse, and we still love to use it for cool-weather crops. If growing in the greenhouse, we heat to around 55°F to 60°F degrees.

Although we use a germination chamber for almost all seeds, we find the lisianthus do better going straight under the lights with clear plastic domes on top. We do not use heat mats, as we find they dry out the seeds and can fry the baby plants. With consistent moisture, lisianthus sprout in about 10 to 14 days. The emerging seedlings are tiny, and you might need a magnifying glass to see them. 

We keep domes on the trays until 80 to 90 percent of the plants have germinated. For other plant species, we pull the domes off sooner, but we find that the baby lisianthus are so prone to drying out that domes help keep the moisture high at this stage.

Growing on

For the first month or so, moisture management is the key concern. You don’t want to overwater your trays; lisianthus can be prone to rotting and damping off. But the tiny plants take a couple of weeks to set deep roots and can dry out quickly. We find they need a good spray at least every other day, often every day. We continue to use the Hudson sprayer and water from above for the first three to four weeks. At that point, the plants have surprisingly deep roots compared to their tiny leaves, and we switch to bottom watering in the basement or spraying with a gentle hose in the greenhouse. 

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seed A lisianthus seedling showing symptoms of rosetting, or stunted growth due to overly hot temperatures.

 

In the basement, we leave our LED lights on for 16 hours a day during the seedling stage and they shut off automatically at night with timers. Although the days are much shorter in the greenhouse, the plants do fine as the natural sunlight seems to make up for the difference. We find greenhouse plants tend to be stronger and easier to care for, but it’s expensive to heat the greenhouse early in the season. 

Temperature is a key factor. It’s critical to keep the seedlings under 75°F. In the basement under lights, temps stay cool, and in the greenhouse we are careful to vent on sunny days. At higher temperatures, lisianthus seedling growth is stunted, and the plants can succumb to a type of dormancy known as rosetting. Rosetted seedlings will put out extra basal leaves and no height, and bloom about four to eight weeks later than the rest of your crop, if at all. Many modern lisianthus have been bred with less risk of rosetting. Seed catalogs will indicate this rosetting resistance trait in their descriptions. 

Once the lisianthus have their first set of leaves, we fertilize weekly utilizing an organic fish fertilizer. It’s relatively low in nutrients, but it does not burn the sensitive plants. The lisis are ready to plant out at about 12 to 14 weeks from sowing. We look for four to five sets of leaves and a rootball that holds together but is not rootbound. 

For an excellent, if technical deep-dive into growing lisianthus plugs, check out the culture sheet from Sakata, a major new lisis varieties breeder, at https://tinyurl.com/paz4x9b5.

 

Planting out

Lisianthus like a cool period to establish, which is why we plant them about six to eight weeks before our last frost. The small seedlings are close to the ground and surprisingly cold tolerant. In an unheated tunnel or the field, we cover the plants with frost fabric if the temps are forecasted to drop below 28°F.

 

planning-and-starting-lisianthus-from-seedAn un-pinched stem of lisianthus Echo Pink Picotee with over a dozen flowers on one stem.

 

We find lisianthus are very sensitive to sunburn and windburn, so be sure to harden them off thoroughly if they’re going outside. We bring them from the basement into the greenhouse several weeks before transplanting into our tunnel, gradually moving them to sunnier benches. At this point, we’re growing all of our lisianthus in high tunnels for improved stem length and protection from the rain. You can grow them in the field but dark colors can be more prone to damage there. 

We plant lisianthus super tight — two plants per 6-inch square, or eight plants per square foot. When we have successful germination, we’ll have two plants in one plug. We don’t thin them and plant the “twin” plants in the hole together. If we only have one plant in a plug, we’ll plant two plugs together in one hole. We plant our lisianthus in weed fabric as we have heavy weed pressure on our farm, burning holes every six inches. We use drip irrigation for water.

I find lisianthus like to be crowded like this, but poor airflow may cause disease. You may want to give your plants more space if you have had issues with botrytis or fusarium. Speaking of disease, we apply Rootshield for a second time when planting out by dunking the whole tray into a plastic tote with a Rootshield solution. The beneficial fungus in Rootshield only lasts 12 weeks, so this second treatment gives plants extra protection from fusarium and other soil-borne diseases. 

To further prevent disease, rotate your lisianthus crops to a new spot each year. We are experimenting with sanitizing beds with hydrogen peroxide and solarization to further minimize disease build-up, and hope to someday invest in a steam soil sterilizer. We put Hortonova netting on all of our lisianthus to support straight stems as healthy plants can easily grow 2 to 3 feet tall.

 

Pinching and disbudding

Pinching and disbudding will change the size and appearance of your lisianthus stems. Un-pinched plants will typically produce one very tall stem each, loaded with as many as 15 blooms. Alternatively, you can pinch plants back to the second set of leaves when they’re around 6 inches tall. Pinched plants will bloom a week or two later on smaller, shorter stems with just a few flowers, but you will get two to four stems per plant. Growing for a retail audience, we do not pinch our stems as our customers love the huge showstopper flowers. However, if you are selling to florists, they may prefer the smaller pinched lisianthus. 

Most lisianthus varieties produce an initial bud that will bloom about 10 to14 days before the remainder of the spray. Removing this bud as soon as it develops will send more energy to the rest of the flowers and encourage them to open more evenly. Some growers take this disbudding a step further. 

I’ve recently connected with some lisianthus growers in Japan, where the standard is to remove all but the three best and largest buds on a stem. These growers get larger blossoms and a more even bloom time. However, I do not think this will become a standard in America anytime soon as it’s so labor-intensive. 

 

Harvest and post-harvest

We prefer to harvest lisianthus when two-thirds or more of the blossoms are open. Lisianthus will continue to open slightly in the vase, but the color is never as saturated and the blooms never as full as those left to open on the plant. While we primarily sell to retail customers, we have also had excellent feedback from florists on lisianthus harvested open, as florists often only can get them tightly closed.

Lisianthus have a long vase life, at least 10 to 12 days, and usually more. We hold cut stems for up to two weeks in the cooler, sometimes longer for event work and holidays, changing the water frequently and with holding solution to help keep the flowers fresh.

 

Pests and disease

Because lisianthus are in the plug trays for so long, we find they can be susceptible to fungus gnats. For this, we apply Gnatrol or Mosquito Bits as needed. Once planted out, thrips are our main issue during the summer and then aphids in the fall. We manage both using biological controls: beneficial nematodes and predatory mites for the thrips, and lacewings for the aphids. 

In addition to the fusarium discussed above, we have had some issues with botrytis on our flowers, especially in the late fall during second and third flushes. It appears overnight as tiny spots on the petals. ZeroTol and BotryStop are two products that have worked for us. 

 

Bloom time, group numbers, and the second flush 

Lisianthus series are labeled as Groups 1, 2, 3, or 4, based on bloom times in year-round greenhouse production. In the field or an unheated tunnel, the groups make only a week or two of difference as lisianthus are triggered to bloom by time in ground, day length, and temperature. Group 1 and 2 typically bloom the earliest, and Group 4 the latest, so planting multiple groups can extend your harvest window. Our first lisianthus to bloom is always the Rosanne series, followed quickly by Voyage 2. Our last lisianthus to bloom are usually Queen of Night and Arena 4, usually around three weeks after the earliest groups. 

Here in Zone 6B, our lisianthus typically bloom from mid-July through early August. When harvesting, we cut deep on the plant, leaving just one to two sets of leaves. We then continue to water well, fertilize, and provide a third dose of Rootshield to nourish the plants and suppress disease. We usually see a second flush of blooms by late September or early October, before our first frost. In our heated tunnels, we repeat this process and get a third cut in November right around Thanksgiving. 

Growers in colder climates with earlier frosts may wish to experiment with cutting lisianthus earlier, when just one or two blooms are open. This should start regrowth sooner, to allow a second harvest before frost. 

 

Back-up plan

As much as I want to encourage every grower to try growing lisianthus from seed, I also admit that a lot can go wrong over the three to four months you grow them. One way to mitigate the risk is to pre-order lisianthus plugs from a wholesaler, usually at least 14 weeks before you need them. This is a great plan if you’re picky about what colors you need. Try growing half of your crop from seed and half from pre-ordered plugs.

Because lisianthus has become such a popular crop, wholesalers have extra trays available in the spring. Farmer Bailey, BallSeed, and other cut flower plug brokers list them as “Available Now,” though you’ll have fewer choices than at pre-order. When we accidentally killed thousands of our plants, we were able to purchase last-minute replacements from Farmer Bailey. 

Although sometimes a labor of love, growing lisianthus from seed has allowed us to provide our customers with greater variety of this popular cut flower while improving our bottom line. It’s also really rewarding to bring these incredible blooms to life from tiny seeds. If you’ve been strictly growing from plugs, I hope you’ll give seed-starting a second chance.

 

Rebecca Kutzer-Rice owns Moonshot Farm, a specialty cut flower farm in East Windsor, NJ. She grows flowers year-round including in a geothermal greenhouse, for retail markets in and around NYC.