The danger (or perhaps fun) of being a member of the ASCFG is participating in the facebook group and seeing what other growers are doing. I read an interesting post from last year about a farmer who got a robust October harvest of lisianthus from planting pre-chilled plugs in August. So I thought I would give it a try :) Here's what I did and the results of my experiment.
Pre-cooled plugs from Ball Tawanga arrived on August 27 and were transplanted on August 29. The air temp measured 93F and the soil temp read 87F.
I received these varieties:
285 Megalo 1 Cherry PC - 1 tray
570 Sabrina 1 Mango PC - 2 trays
Field prep: they were planted in my high tunnel so that when cooler weather arrived, I could keep them hotter due to their preference for blooming in the heat. 30 days prior to planting, I covered the row in plastic to solarize. Our high tunnel has shade cloth but usually in August the high temperatures are 100+, however we had a strange cool front come through and we had high temps of only 87 for the first two weeks after they were transplanted. At first, I thought this was a good thing to prevent rosetting, but in hindsight, since the plugs were already chilled, I think they were planted too late. Last year, we had 109F into October and I think the lisianthus would've done much better - but this year, late summer was cooler and they didn't thrive.
I fertilized with compost tea and some poo from our bunny :) On September 15, I added lights to the tunnel since lisianthus is a facultative long-day plant and our days were growing shorter, under 11 hrs. By October 4th, the plants were roughly 13 inches tall with 9 leaf nodes and buds began to set. I fed them a calcium foliar feed but stems stayed thin and wiry. I didn't have any pest pressure or disease but when they finally bloomed on November 8th, the flowers were small, mostly single, and the stem length was not impressive, around 18-20 inches.
Megalo Cherry was mostly single and Sabrina Mango was more ruffled and closer to the form of a double. Of the two varieties, I definitely preferred the Mango - however it was directly under the supplemental lighting and the Cherry was a little farther away from the lighting. Since I know lisianthus likes high light intensity, I believe if I had given it more light, the flowers would've been more robust.
In the end, I would consider this experiment a failure. The quality of harvest is not enough to earn me a profit. However, I can see that if you had a robust sales outlet and more space, you could easily manipulate an environment with supplemental heat and light to produce a quality lisianthus product in Autumn.
It was a fun experiment and I'll tuck it away in the back of my brain. It's possible that if we're having a blazing hot year, I'll sow a tray of lisianthus, chill it in my cooler, and give it another go on a smaller scale - you never know! :D
If you're curious about how we normally grow it, check out the previous blog post :)
Happy planting!
warmly,
Sarah Jo
Comments