Planting Lisianthus Plugs

I love the look of lisianthus, but I know many experienced farmers and gardeners that say lisianthus are tough to seed start. I am willing to tackle almost any obstacle, but when I decided to add lisianthus to the list of flowers to grow this year, I knew plugs were going to be the best way for me. Plugs are just baby plants that are ready to ploop into the ground. No problem I thought. This should be easy! I ordered them at the end of January and our baby plants arrived on May 17th. On May 18th, I planted our tiny lisies into a prepared bed, all 125 of them!

I dug a small hole with a plastic fork that was large enough to fit the plug. I tossed in a small amount of Flower-tone, placed the plug in the hole and filled in any remaining space with dirt. They were planted every 6” in 3 rows. Well sort of 3 rows…

What in the holy drunken row is this?!! I tried to plant straight rows by eye. Clearly, I need some kind of guideline when planting rows. My husband walked up when I was about 2/3 through planting the center row and asked if it was supposed to be straight down the center. Indignantly I replied, “Well, yes, of course!”. His sarcastic response, “Then why are you planting at the edge of the row?” So, I stood up to see what the heck he was talking about and sure enough, the row is not even close to straight. Not even a little bit. To make matters worse, I then tried get back to center so that I could try to correct what I’d done and to create space to try to plant a row on either side but that just made it worse. I would have sworn I was planting directly down the center of the bed. Anyway, straight rows are overrated, and I’ve decided the plants don’t care! :-)