6,340 Garden Web Discussions | Growing from Seed

Good news, my first cherry tomato seedlings are starting to come out. All is well with the world.

It;s been a while since I came back to this site. Just busy doing other stuff. Actually just cane back from a cruise to the Bahamas. Great time except for the first night when the 16 foot seas made it a little uncomfortable to say the least. Besides that the weather was perfect. Anyway, thanx Eagle for the thorough explanation on the best was to plant germinated seeds. Most of the seeds i germinated are doing fine especially the cilantro and parsley. Ther are 2-4 inches already. Oh yea, I was wondering.......do you ever join two small plants together and just let them grow like that? I tried it last year and, for the most part, they seemed to do fine. My feeling is if you try to plant 5-6 plants together that might actually inhibit the growth of the plant. The other plants I germinted were basil and they are doing fine. There are 3 empty cells where the purple basil should be growing but are empty. Not sure why. I have other purple in different trays.

I am glad I never bought the SEEDER for $15. Don't need it. I do what you do and tap the seeds and put them in a very small plastic bowl. I then just grab some strong reading glasses, a good pair of tweezers and I am good to go. I will definitely try your method of "clearing out the casualties" though. I figured it would be better to take out the defective plants root and all. This is my third year of gardening and I have learned to separate the seeds in each cell. I put 3 in each one and separate them. I could just take the roots out ...probably without disturbing the main plant. Not sure though. As for labeling the plants I am using some fluorescent green plastic silverware that was left over from some outdoor barbeque we had last year. Works great. How are you doing in PA with your gardening?

I use the plant stakes to record when planted and any potting up or movement during the growth. Al

I like the fact that you can be as OCD (or not) as is personally gratifying. Last year was the first time I began recording anything. I did it more as a journal/diary than anything else. This year I am growing everything from seed, and am trying to keep an additional more organized chart of sowing date/germination time/ early growth habit/container size. But I am afraid that I am not always good about recording the info and I haven't tried to use excell, its just a word doc with a table.

Every spring as perennials begin to emerge, I am walking around the garden, going hmmmmmmmm....I wonder what that is? I dont always remember from year to year what I have planted where. I really should draw myself a map.

The first year I grew perennials from seed, I lost all of my tags, got everything mixed up and ended up tucking in plants randomly. The following year when the plants grew to normal size and bloomed was full of surprises, some good some alarming.

Yep, I did pull them off the heat. Good point though, I'm sure they'd be even taller then. Yikes. It's driving me nuts! I checked the soil temp - 72F (no heating pad, under lights in a 70F room)

I won't be home until late tonight, hopefully they didn't keep on growing taller.

hmmm, I have the same problem, but with a twist. I started my seeds using the wet paper towel method on heat. As soon as germination occured I planted them and put them under light. Within two days they were hitting the lights. On another occasion I simply planted the seeds directly and put them under light immediately. "Finally" they sprouted and grew at a normal rate. I think the extra heat sends some sort of a message to them to grow quickly. At any rate, simply transplanting them deeply seems to solve the problem in the long run.

I live in a rural area so this may not be available for everyone, but did you know that many dairy farms "make" quick-compost from their cow manure? The stuff gets collected up and it's processed through these high-pressure steam, mixing, sludging, bacteria inducing, super sonic, blasting, turbo-charged flux capasitor machines. Ready-to-use compost comes out the other end and it's fabulous stuff. Already seasoned and airy and full of nutrition (but not so much nitrogen that it burns). The dairy here charges about $65 for a truck-bed load. I mix this stuff with peatmoss and vermiculite and "Bam" ... I have more mix than I have containers to fill. Depending on what I'm using it for depends on the ratio. I use a scooper -- 4 scoops Peat, 4 scoops Verm, 2 scoops compost for seeding. Make it 3 scoops compost for potting up, and 4 scoops compost for houseplants, outdoor containers, or raised beds. Vermiculite (course ground for gardeners) is pricey. About $60 for a 40 lb bag...but the bag goes surprisingly far and lasts several years.

Yeah, regular top soil (fill) can be problematic as it didn't provide my seedlings with enough nutrients. I ended up getting good results from 1/3 germinating mixture, 1/3 top soil (fill), and 1/3 humus/compost mix with a small amount of duck manure. All in all it wasn't too expensive (10$ for a large bag of germinating mix, 3$ for humus/manur, 2$ for 80 lbs of top soil). The mixture is a medium soil where the roots can spread easily. It also doesn't dry out too fast and provides the nutrients for the seedlings.

Just wanted to update you all since you were so helpful with your advice. OK - so I did a few things since two weeks ago. First, I began giving the plants 24 hours of light instead of 14-16. Because the lights only have the ability to move up and down, I was not able to rotate the lights to different locations. I did, however, begin rotating the flats in order to give any plants that were getting leggy (or in general just having trouble growing), so that they were closer to the lights.

Second, I bought some mylar film and stapled it to some wood frames that I built in order to keep as much light in as possible. As you can see in the photo, the Mylar is nearly as reflective as a mirror, so I think it has been helping quite a bit.

I also purchased a 90 watt LED hydroponic grow lamp. It wasn't cheap but after it first blinded me, I think it was well worth it. I began moving some of the higher growing corn over to it because the corn was getting taller than the fluorescent lights and leaning severely toward it. I'm hoping they will correct themselves with the new light directly above them.

I have attached pictures of several levels of my flats and also a picture of the grow lamp that I bought.

One of my cucumber seedlings started flowering.....it's not very large, but otherwise looks healthy. Is this a problem?

When I saw your thread title I thought university extensions were now advising people on how to grow pot!
I do like your use of those cups. It's hard to find deep containers without them being really wide too.

My old leaky bathtop is not a raised bed in my garden anf grows excellent tomatoes. I always find use for old things.

Another option is to purchase seedlings from a nursery so you don't have to wait for seed to grow again thus getting behind in the season.

Veriria
This takes all the fun out of it. I don't make money from greenhouse, Vegetable Garden and tree orchard. It is a hubby although expensive one. Today I surprised my Girl with arrangement of roses and grand duke Jasmin. It smelled like heaven. All I produced. She appreciated it with a big hot kiss. I was proud of myself. That is what the hubby for.

I actually shake off some of the soil on my peppers and tomatoes when I pot up. It allows me more room to bury the stem. What's strange to me about your post is that your plants suffer because of it. What exactly are you transplanting? I'm thinking like Al--it could be you're potting up plants that don't like their roots disturbed.

Here is a link that might be useful: Loribees Garden Blog

This is my first time ever potting up-I usually just transplant my winter sown HOS directly into the ground. So far I've done morning glories and sunflowers, both of which I watered first, about 20 minutes before I transplanted, and both of which I purposely knocked off most, if not all of the soil around the roots. I wanted the roots to get into contact with the "new" fresh soil as soon as possible.

Both types were started as WS flats, and each was transplanted both as small HOS to a pot, and as individuals into flats to generate 3 flats per flower type. I'm simply experimenting to see which way I like better, which works out, and trying to figure out which is the better way to go when giving away to friends and family, seedling exchange, etc.

So far, so good on all the transplants-it's been over a week, and haven't lost one yet. I am handling them by the leaves, not the stems.

I love the "baggy" method, we've done it more or less that way for years, when I was a kid...we used to sprout bean seeds and such on a paper/styrofaom plate with a little water and then a moisten paper towel over type, they would sprout.

I have used coffee filters for about 8 years now, I like them better and they are cheaper than paper towels too. Much stronger than paper towels. Oh, make sure you keep notes on what you do, how you start them, how long it took them to germinate, germination rate, and so forth. That way you will know how long it takes for your climate/temp. you had at that time.
Like now, I have seeds going in an unair conditioned room, ave, day temps 96 night about 70. I have Mexican Bird of Paradise, they germinated in 1 day. 100% too. Carnations took 2 days to start, they average in the soil 14-21 days.
So, this is really the best way, unless you start them outdoors, winter sowing and summer/fall sowings.

Anyway, if you would like to chat about anything, email me, let me know in the subject you are the one from the TEST Post...
:) Fran

I have lots of unopened packets of seeds sitting around in a drwaer. Most are dated 2005 , some go back to 2002.Are they likely to geminate or should i just put them on the compost heap? I have wallflowers, geranium seeds, parsley ,cress , radishes, verbena,dill coriander, chrsanthemum, tagets, naaturtiums , oh and some tomato.
Advice on how to germinate seeds from the packet would be very helpful too? Many thanks, Andrew

I love New Hampshire! Your state motto gets me every time: Live free, or DIE!!!

I haven't heard of lettuce turning black before, I'm stumped. I usually try and get my seedling trays outside for a few hours the very first chance that I have sun and temps above 50 though, so I wouldn't be the one to ask.

I live about 4 hours south of chicago, and this last weekend they had 3 inches of snow. I think if I lived much more north than zone 5 I'd start to twitch if I had to deal with snow on April 18th.

Our last snow was April 1st. Heavy wet snow. Of course later that afternoon it all washed away and the next day was around 60 I seem to remember. That's NH! One year we had snow in May.

I wasn't planning on heating it but by the time the end of the season comes, who knows? I was only going to use it to harden off the seedlings and maybe grow some lettuce in the fall. I don't know how well it will hold up to the snow around here so I was going to take it down and put it in the shed for the winter.

I had some of the Bibb lettuce with leaves that turned black, maybe from too much watering. I didn't notice these leaves before I put them outside so I don't remember if they were like that before or not. Some of them were coming in dark and then they faded back to green. Plus some of what I have growing is red looseleaf.

The trays that you see in the frame are only 1/2 of what I have growing just for lettuce. I have 3 more trays in the basement still under lights. Plus the peppers and tomatoes. I figured some would die so I planted extra and now I'm running out of room. The other day was so warm in there I think I could have put some of the peppers in there to give them extra light and brought them back in when the sun went down.