December 4, 2017

It is rapidly approaching the date that I start my summer Solanacae (tomatoes ,chilies eggplants...)

For a number of years I used soil blocks to start my seedlings with. These are made by compressing potting soil into which the seeds are sown. Seeds are started on small blocks and then these seedlings are potted on by placing the cube into an ever increasing sized block. I have 3/4, 2 inch and 4 inch blockers. These make wonderful plants for transplanting. The premise of the blocks is that the seedling never experience transplant shock.

This is wonderful technology that I feel is much more suited for more humid climes. The seedlings that made it to be transplant-able  was much less than the number of seedlings I would start with.This puzzled me and I set out to experiment with different seed starting methods.

For the last couple of years I have started seedlings in small 4 oz cups.I sow seeds pretty thick in these cups. The reason for doing "dog hair thicket" sowing is I can more easily control the humidity. Most of my mortality with seedlings is from germination to the development of the first true leaves. Once the seedling get to this stage they can be transplanted into their individual containers. 

Here again they are transplanted into 4 oz cups and as their roots fill out the cups they are potted on to 8 oz and then to 16 oz cups. Even when I split up the young seedlings growing in the ''dog hair thickets" there has not been any sever transplant shock.

These seedling are grown on a heating mat that keeps their roots at a nice toasty temp of 65 to 75 degrees. This temp promotes fast growth. Temps in the 55 to 65 range is the dampening off zone and the seedling grow very slowly. This is a problem I had until the use of a heating mat.

The first seedlings are started mid to late December and the second sowing around late January / early February. Depending on the winter the plant room can be on the cool side and can be hovering near the dampening off zone. The heating mat prevents this.

So with these changes the seedlings for their specified sow dates are all equal sized when they are ready to be out planted.

This has worked well for several years and expect it to continue.