It’s taken a while to get all the seedlings potted up that were sown back on August 18th. I had great germination with all but two seed varieties, and I am pretty sure they were old seeds. I will be doing a separate post on this later as I await a response from the vendor regarding this issue.
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A total of 303 seedlings have been potted up. I know the exact number because I keep meticulous records (for now… until things get crazy in the springtime 😂). I am sure I have lost a few of those seedlings since potting them up because some were pretty tiny, and I am not 100% diligent about keeping them watered regularly.
Here’s the tray of seedlings before I started potting them up.
I started potting up seedlings August 31st, and some of these didn’t get potted up until later as I waited for more of the seeds to germinate. When I sowed the seeds, I counted how many of each I sowed so I would know when the majority of the seeds had germinated.
When potting up, I use these 6-cell deep cell packs so there is plenty of room for root development.
I get mine from Greenhouse Megastore. Right now you can get 10 sheets for $8.90. That’s 48 cells per ‘sheet,’ and each sheet fits into a standard tray.
I used Miracle Gro potting soil for most of these, and it can be a little cumbersome when potting up the smaller seedlings since the Miracle Gro has some chunky stuff in the mix. I have a stash of plastic spoons and forks that I save from restaurant take-out so I can scoop the seedlings out of the cells if they don’t pop out on their own. And I keep a stash of wooden chop sticks that I use to make a hole to plant each seedling.
One seed variety completed! I had 100% germination with these dianthus seeds. I sowed 5 and only needed a minimum of 3.
I had excellent germination with the Verbena bonariensis seeds too! I wasn’t expecting much, but they started germinating just 4 days after sowing.
My notes say I sowed 36 seeds (so 3 per cell), but not one cell had 3 to germinate. I don’t know if I sowed 24 or 36. I am going to guess 36. That sounds about right. I potted up 20 of these seedlings last week.
Since these were germinated and growing in my grow room, I started the hardening off process as well. I accidentally left them out on the table too long one day, and thankfully they seemed to be okay despite the intense sunshine they got for far too long. I am doing a separate blog on starting these seeds sometime next week when I get the chance.
I barely had enough Frizzle Sizzle Burgundy pansy seeds to germinate for my use, and so I wanted to try an experiment. One cell pack has the standard Miracle Gro potting soil and the other, I used Jiffy seed starting mix, adding a little more perlite, and then put in some Azomite.
It will be interesting to see if one cell packs does better than the other.
My Spring Matrix Tricolor mix pansy seeds were still pretty small at the time of transplanting, so I did the Jiffy seed mix with added perlite and Azomite for all of those because I need all of them. This is a much easier and softer mix than the Miracle Gro potting soil.
I finally finished up all the potting up this past weekend! Ignore the dirty greenhouse plastic! This is on my to-do list next week – cleaning the greenhouse plastic.
I finished potting these up just in time too. I started a few more seeds earlier this week, so I will do a separate post about those.
