6,340 Garden Web Discussions | Growing from Seed
I never implied in any shape or form that the plants you
get at garden centers or nurseries that are vegetables are full grown plants.
Nor did I. I just commented that it seems weird to me to plan from the outset to grow your garden from store plants; I never claimed full grown. Please don't take everything so personally.
Now that this has been clarified, can I please receive an answer to my original question, which is this; which vegetables are best grown from seed, and which should be started using baby vegetable plants?
This is based on a faulty premise, though -- that there are some sort of common garden plants that are unreasonably hard to grow from seed, that an expert's help is needed. Nothing that you listed is at all hard to grow from seed or has long germination times. Long germination times are things like coffee, some flowers, a number of trees, etc. Mostly exotic things. What you listed are classic garden plants, and the traditional way to grow a garden is from seed. If your garden is any sort of reasonable size, buying large numbers of nursery plants every year will cost you a pretty penny indeed.
You should be happy with this news! You wanted to grow things from seed, and lucky for you, that's very easy for common garden plants like you listed above. Now, if you ever want to grow sequoias, or kauri, or something of that nature...
By starting the ones that take longer to germinate indoors I mean this; you plant them under grow lights, and wait for them to germinate. When they're big enough to be transplanted you transplant them to a bigger container. When the seedlings are big enough you gradually harden them off, and then you finally transplant them to the container you intend to grow them in, or directly into the ground that is your gardening plot.
You're making this needlessly complicated. In general, for plants started indoors, you just plant your seeds in little planter pots, cover them up with a little soil, keep them watered (preferably from the bottom) and in a place where they can get enough light so they won't get leggy, and in general just let them do their thing. You don't typically keep re-transplanting them unless you started way too early for some reason; they'll go straight from your planter pots to where you want them to grow for good (after hardening, of course).
There are lots of variants on this, of course -- peat pots, peat pellets, germinating in plastic bags, and so on down the line, but it all works out to basically the same thing. Starting from seed isn't nearly as hard as you're making it out to be. The only real challenge, in general, is making sure they get enough light. And all seedlings need this, not just a select few (although some are more likely to die with insufficient light than others -- lettuce, brassicas, etc).
The only transplanting I generally do apart from putting them straight into the ground is if I need to thin out some seeds; the ones that get removed get put into pots of their own. Transplanting shocks plants, slowing down their growth. Also, you want your plants to have a nice rootball that roughly fills the pot by the time they get put in the ground. If the plant is in too big of a pot, it'll lose all of the dirt, its roots will hang free, and there'll be more transplant shock.
Not all plants need to be started indoors. In fact, some are best started outdoors because they're more sensitive to being transplanted (melons and squash are the classic examples of this). In general, almost anything *can* be started outdoors, but you'll generally get a later start on the season when you do. And if some plants are marginal where you are (for example, eggplant is for us), if you don't start indoors, it may not make it to harvest before it gets cold again.
Some plants tend to "stall" their growth above soil somewhat for varied times after being transplanted. It's the period I hate the most cuz it often makes me think they're gonna die, but I just wait it out & treat them like normal and they start back growing again. After a transplant, the seedling will tend to get it's hold on the soil again & grow some more roots before it takes back off above soil.
Peace - Steve
I think when the seeds grow like grass, with no space between them, then it is too much.
with larger seeds it is easy to control but with very small tiny ones is another story.
I have a method to cope with this problem.
I take some fine dry potting, or garden, soil and mix my tiny seeds in it. I really mix it with my hand , on a piece of newspaper or container. Now I have about 3 or more fistfull of the mix. I take some and broadcast it over the entire area little bit at a time untill run out.
Take another fistfull, another. This way I have traced the area maybe ten times.
Statistically the seeds are going to be evenly spaced and close to the average space between them. probability of having seeds clumped up or having wide gaps will be very small. Now, If I wanted to plant in trays for indoor, I will use the same method but with smaller amout of mixture. Poor a little bit of mix in each compartment. Do this two or tree times, or untill run out of mixture. Then cover your seeding and water them.
This is goof proof seed planting. This way separating and tranplantin the grown seeds is possible, as most of them are not attached to each other. Or just pinch off the excess ones, if you have already plenty of them.
Also, lets say that you have 50% germination success rate. Still the ones that germinated will be more evenly distributed.
Depends on how much you disturbed them. Sometimes when seedlings first break through the soil, their first leaves can be damaged quite bad. They almost always survive it though. I'd just keep an extra eye on it & maybe fertilize with a watered down solution.
You should see my library. I took out all the "mobile" furniture and hung my two huge homemade LED grow chambers -- one with mostly blue light and the other with mostly red -- each lined with aluminum foil curtains. It looks like the aliens have arrived. ;)
As to cutting the netting away from the pellets, why couldn't one take a sharp knife, such as an Xacto, expose just one small area of the netting's side and slice through the netting and repack soil around the area? I don't think it is totally necessary to REMOVE all of the netting, just give roots a free place to go. Sort of like popping a balloon. It certainly would be easier than unearthing all your plants and teasing all of the roots after removing the netting it would seem to me...but then, that's jusme.
I saw that!! I had exactly the same experience with a pumpkin plant last year. Dug it up and the roots had been trapped in that stupid netting. I still like them, but I peel off the netting when I pot up. I wonder if we should email the Jiffy people and tell them to change their directions.
It will help.
The leggy lettuce may make it but needs to be close to the light. after transplanting set them on a 2X4 or something to bring it up close to the light. For the cucs, don't cover the exposed stem, set it on the soil in the pot & light pack the soil just up to the top of the root ball where the stem is now.
