Sunflowers and lupins!

noggy1810

Am a new gardener and need advice. 1) I have grown some sunflower plants form seed and they are now about 4 inches tall. I thought I was doing great but now half of them are falling over to the side and one looks dead. Is this just natural selection or am I doing something wrong i.e. should they be propped up?
2) My lupins again grown from seed (Dwarf variety) are going great but want to plant out. How far apart should they be planted as 60cm which read elsewhere sounds very excessive.
Any help greatly appreciated.

Dodser

Sunflowers will need to be propped up with a cane (they can grow to 10ft high) But at 4 inches they shouldn't be falling over. I wonder do you have vine wevil? This is a beetle that lave attack the root. If it looks like the root system is gone that is one possible cause.

The Sweeper

Where did you start your seedlings off?

A common mistake with seedlings is to start them off indoors to provide them with the heat they require, but then they don't get enough light. Without sufficient light, they will become 'leggy' - they stretch towards the light source that's available, and end up with thin, bent stems and eventually they'll fall over and die.

Even if you have a bright windowledge, it really needs to be a sort of sun-streaming picture window to provide sufficient light for seedlings to grow strong.

I don't have a polytunnel or greenhouse, so I like to use those plastic storage boxes - the opaque ones that you use for kids toys or jumpers under the bed. They're usually available at any reject store for good prices. I buy large, flattish boxes about 6-8" in depth and maybe two feet x 1 foot in area. I drill - carefully - aeration holes in the plastic lid of the box - then set seed using either egg cartons and seed raising mix, or peat pellets. Everything gets watered in, lid goes on, box goes outside.

The box will show condensation on the interior and it's a good measure of whether or not the mix has dried out. You can rewet using a misting bottle, but I find that the box itself is a good mechanism for keeping the soil damp but not waterlogged. The light they get is very bright because the box is outside - much brighter than a windowsill. They have protection from wind and from frost provided by the sides and lid of the box. You need to be careful of them in strong sunlight, because the box can act as an incubator and cook them, but the beauty of it being a box is you can move it into shade if you want.

noggy1810

Thanks for your replies. The seeds were cultivated indoors and I think that you could be onto a winner re lack of light. I planted some out yesterday and with overnight rain and wind 2 are RIP. The stalk just broke/rotted.