Excellent, Dave!!!

crap, i killed a bunch of those seedlings without knowing what they were.

Dave

Very nice indeed strong looking roots and that is key. Is that rootball of the 3 seedlings only?

Great root systems, and I bet those will be beautiful stalks of brilliant red next year!

Thanks,

HummerSteve, the rootball is just the three plants. I used Miracle Gro potting soil which is mostly peat and includes fertilizer in little time release balls. I've had good results with it for other potted annuals. Around the same time I also planted some seedlings directly into my poor backyard soil. Some of those survived but growth was nothing compared to the potted L. cardinalis.

Dave

I agree potting soils with the food already in them is better. How about the watering of the lobelia. Did you manual water or what method did you use and how often. I ask this since these plants usually like a good bit of water.

Lots of hand watering. Kept in shade when little and moved into some sun later. I think the pot protects from bugs when tiny, and the stones are my solution to squirrels, which like to dig my plants out of pots. They seem durable once established.

This is nice. I think I might have ditched mine because I thought they were foxgloves. Do you have a picture of entire plant? Beautiful picts.

Dave

I also have cardinal flower in the ground now for a couple of years and doing well.

I hope you present photos of yours come spring/summer flowering.

A couple of the smaller ones bloomed just before frost. They were blue. I'm hoping some of the others will be red this year. I bought the seeds online from "Seedville USA". Maybe I shouldn't have.

If the blooms were blue, you have another lobelia. They should look like this...

ctnchpr,
I know. Here's the seed packet,

I'm thinking it's actually Great Blue Lobelia, (Lobelia siphilitica). A good hummingbird plant with an unfortunate name. The flowering ones were small, probably because they're only one growing season in age.

Looks like you got a mix of L. cardinalis and L. siphilitica seeds in your packet. I shared some L. cardinalis seeds in a SASBE on the seed exchange a couple years back, and the recipient ended up getting a L. siphilitica seedling too. And they were commercial seeds, so the mix up was not my fault!

I am little jealous, I only get L. cardinalis seedlings. But not too jealous, they are both gorgeous plants!

My seed grown Lobelia are beginning to bloom. All came through the winter OK, and I'm glad to see there are some cardinalis in the bunch! :-)

Here are the same plants as in the first photo above.

Same plants as first above, 2013 07 30.

Heres My Third year plant- I have another first year plant thats not nearly as red this year.