6,340 Garden Web Discussions | Growing from Seed
What is your germination medium? Perhaps you are leaving it in too long or they medium is absorbing and retaining too much water for the seedlings.
I would recommend you pour your used tea somewhere outside. There must be a plant or pot that could use it. Keep the indoor water reservoir (not to mention that it isn't regularly emptied, just topped up) clean with just water.
Thanks purselanegarden. I think my medium is draining okay...I'm betting that as opposed to new damping off issues, I was just seeing some plants succumbing more slowly than others. They were already doomed and just took a while to show it. So far things seem to be going okay again. I appreciate your feedback :)
My two cents : ditch the peat/vermicompost/perilite/vermiculite combo that you make. I have a feeling the ratio you are using is holding too much water or not letting water flow consistently through the mix (your vermicompost can do that). Pick up some Sungro, Promix, Fafards, or some other soilless mix. Have a soft touch with watering, let your fans blow around a bit ( I run mine at night when the lights are off), and don't worry about using chamomile, vinegar, or other 'stuff'. R-E-L-A-X, as Aaron Rodgers would say :)
Thanks Mitch :) I haven't been using any vermicompost and the water seems to drain plenty well through my equal parts peat/perlite/vermiculite mix. I had been adding a bit more peat this season and went back to the old ratio after all the issues. Fans are on 24/7 and I'm letting everything dry out way more than I think I should haha, but so far so good. (I've been home most days lately so I can water midday if needed). I've also replanted most of what I lost into smaller cells that dry out faster anyway, just since the seedlings won't need as much room now that they'll be late going into the garden anyway. I am guilty of using chamomile, but that may just be helping my paranoia more than anything else, and I can live with that ;)
I live in the north-central area of the USofA, and am a huge zinnia lover. May I suggest buying lilliput zinnia seed, or dwarf zinnia seed. I start my zinnia's in Jiffy 7's about 8 weeks before last frost date. The dwarf zinnias are slow to germinate, some of the best colours are the slowest to germinate, so I take that into consideration. When planting out time comes I crowd them in my plantings, and have spectacular results. It is as if they support each other while stretchinig out for more sunlight. Zinnias do need fertile soil and full sun, but the rewards are great. Mine always are lanky, but crowded together they produce long stemmed flowers. I also plant some of the California Giant Zinnia's, and they truly are giants of my garden. Fortunately the seed is available by the ounce or part of ounce at the garden center near me. A fungicide of natural or chemical nature is almost always needed to keep the plants healthy. Like mentioned by others..topping off and deadheading is worth the effort. Yes, zinnias are a great cut flower, and last in bouquets a long time.
@floral: Yes, I'm referring to cut flowers, but we're also thinking of selling a few starter plants as well. How would you approach either?
@ThinMan: I'll look into the pricing of it and see if we can make it work to buy a bunch of 72 cell trays. We're lucky right now to have free access to basically as many 200 cell trays as we want, but if we have to transplant to something bigger as a result, it makes more sense to spring for the 72 cell trays if we can afford it.
I like 72 count or 50 count cell trays. I think the 50's give better space for root development, but they take more work putting into the ground, and of course take up more room on the growing bench . If I had to choose one, it would be the 50 count. If I was growing starter plants for people, it would really depend on the type of plants I would be growing. Starting in small cell trays (certainly less than 72 counts) and bumping up to 3 1/2" to 4" pots would be ok.
I don't know what you are growing, but there are several varieties of flowers whose seeds benefit from or even require light for germination. Statice, snapdragons, scabiosa, and dianthus are examples. You'll also get a little bit of warmth from the lights if they're nice and close.
I don't understand why i should care if its "rough looking" and "finely textured and uniform". This is and extreme close-up, its dried out, and is possible "rough" b/c of the way i filled the trays in (loosely). That coir info is good stuff though, ill be sure to use peat for my homemade mix.
I can't find how to start HEIRLOOM NON GMO Coleus Mix 100 Seeds seeds. Any help. Thanks
There is a photo of seedlings (cotyledons) here....The next, or true leaf, will be distinctly 'hairy'. You said 'weeds in the spot', if these are outside and germinating in the ground, protect from slugs and snails or you could lose them.
Scroll to very last photo:
In which case neither the Asparagus nor the Uncinia will live through your winters. It might be best to grow them in containers which you can bring under cover. The Uncinia is slow growing so it would be some years before you had a decent clump and you'd need to keep it going through several Winters.
You don't want to pull healthy plants out, but if you mean that you don't want to KILL healthy plants, take some and separate their roots from their twins and re-pot them. Many people do that all the time and have great success. Size is an issue, though, so don't wait too long.
Every sort of plant has a suggested spacing from others. It's not chiseled in stone but it's a rule of thumb that one ignores only at peril unless one is experimenting or knows a whole awful lot. So in a way you can say that the tom seedlings are healthy but they won't stay that way without some serious work. 99%+ of gardeners wouldn't plant them out while so doubled and tripled up.
Yeah, normally tomatoes are grown in clusters :) so those needed to be transplanted to individual containers some time back. This assuming you want most of them to survive.
If you don't then just snip all the extras off and then transplant the remaining ones into a larger containers individual 4" containers - they are already rootbound in those 72 cells as those are intended for germination but not growing-on.
It's going to be very difficult to separate the root balls now without doing damage but you should be able to save most.
For future reference the term "thinning" normally applies to direct-seeded vegetables, not those grown as transplants. So while it is possible to germinate several tomato seeds in the same cell you cannot grow healthy multiples in the same cell.
And when you transplant those to the new containers be sure to plant them deeply burying most all of the bare stem.
Dave
patchwork, please use a very light hand with the corn meal. Corn gluten is a natural germination inhibitor. Pure corn gluten is sold as a weed and crab grass preventer (pre-emergent) for lawns, I don't know how much is present in amounts of corn meal.
It means the stems are stretched (aka leggy, etiolated when pale or yellow) disproportionate to the amount and size of top growth. This stretching is due to "reaching" for/seeking light. Not only can they not support the weight of the top growth as it develops, they cannot adequately provide it with nutrients and water. The cellular structure of the stretched stem becomes distorted, twisted, resulting in sluggish circulation at best.
You can see it easily in most all your plants. The stems are easily 3-4x the height of normal seedlings, 3-4x as tall as the tops are wide even at this point. And the situation will only get worse, get more imbalanced until the plant stem finally breaks.
You can Google any of these terms for many photos and much information but you can't get around the need for adequate light. It is the single most important factor when growing plants indoors. Which is why as I said above, even in the greenhouse with all sun exposure it has we still have to use supplemental fluorescent lighting for growing seedlings.
Thank you for all the help, I've only got a few questions left. Do you think I should I start over? and would it be better to buy florescent lights now and try again with the inside garden, or start my garden outside since it's warming up? And if I do start my garden outside will they become leggy while trying to reach for the sun?
I don't know about the grass you're using or your growing conditions, but I can tell you my experience w/ growing grass. First, if possible, soak the grass seed in water overnight before planting -- it makes it sprout so much quicker! but it is a pain dealing with the wet seed. :) Otherwise, be sure to keep it well-watered until it gets growing. Up here that means to water it every day. In your location you may need to water more frequently...
A few years ago I had a patch of lawn dug up by the water company, leaving me a big bare spot. I went to a local hardware store and bought a roll of bulk burlap. I seeded the area then cut the burlap to roughly fit the spot and laid it over the seed and watered it in. The burlap helped keep the birds away, helped keep the seed moist and in place, and once the grass got growing it was hard to find. No need to remove the burlap -- it just composts away! The water company guys came back to repair the bare spot long after I already had the new grass growing and they were fascinated by my burlap fix. :) Just make sure you get natural burlap and not some synthetic knockoff.
Here's a link to the stuff I used: Natural burlap.
Another vote for burlap, although I do remove it after the grass is growing good. It's reusable too. Home Depot sells burlap.