Why I Oughta...

I've been harvesting the purple blooms off of the Lisianthus Celeb Metallic Blue plants that I tucked into our front yard over the past few weeks.  They're interesting, but I'm thinking that I'm not maximizing them as a cut flower.  By that, I mean that I'm probably making a rookie (cut flower) mistake:  cutting the stems too short.   It is human nature (I think) to cut them short.  You see these secondary (emerging) buds on the stems and you don't want to sacrifice them by cutting deeply.  So, you end up cutting them short.  And, you get MORE blooms.  But, they're SHORT ones.   I've been surprised by how EASY these have been to grow.  They're all doing well and pumping out blooms, despite not being billed as cut-and-come-again.  I've fed them on the same monthly cycle as dahlias/roses with the 3-in-1 and pests haven't been a problem.   I have a little rabbit fence around these, but Google says that rabbits will...

August, already?  Yeeesh. The heat is here, but for the first time (for me as a gardener), so, too are the Lisianthus. As a cut flower in our garden.   That means that I'm learning something new.   The garden continues to reward patience.  In this case it is patience to see the blooms change color.  To their intended color.  Turns out, that's just what Lisianthus does:  it changes color as it blooms.   Back in Spring, I bought some Lisianthus Metallic Blue (Celeb 2) plugs from Garden Club .  They arrived a bit early (my fault), so I potted-them-up and tried to keep them alive for a month-plus until I could plant them outside.  They went in the newly expanded Saratoga Ginkgo bed in late May .   All eight plugs survived the first month indoors and have made it to August in the ground.  I protected them from rabbits with a little chicken wire cage , so I'm not sure if the rabbits would have gotten to these. And...