During the time spent planning and building the garden house, we attempted to grow some seed starters inside. This went really well- up until it didn’t. We found ourselves dealing with issues anyone familiar with gardening will usually encounter at some point.
Seedlings – Lessons Learned
‘Leggy’ seedlings
The first issue we came across was our seedlings looking ‘leggy’. ‘Leggy’ seedlings are stretched out tall and thin, bending forward rather than straight up. With some detective work online, we discovered that the usual cause of this is not enough light, so the seedlings will stretch trying to get more sun.
Leggy Seedlings, aka what NOT to do
Solution?
We made our way to the local hardware store and picked up a grow light to use inside until we could get our starters out in the sun. (Around here, temps typically don’t stay warm enough to plant outside until late April or early May) We also ran a small fan nearby to imitate wind. This was to encourage the stems to grow thicker, and it seemed to help as well.
Consistent watering
Were we watering too little…too much? This was definitely a question for our first time growing seed starters, and it was difficult to find that balance. There isn’t really a hard and fast rule on how often to water.
Solution?
A good rule of thumb is just to make sure the soil stays moist (not wet!). This year we used self-watering seed starter trays that keep a reservoir underneath and slowly wick water up to each pod. It seemed to help a lot to keep consistent moisture.
Our final defeat
Unfortunately, we ended up with soil contaminated by fungus gnats and eventually root rot. This was the final blow to our poor little seedlings.
Solution?
The conclusion we came to on this is two fold: 1) time your seedlings closer to planting time so you can acclimate them outside earlier in their growth. 2) use small pebbles, sand, etc. on top of your starter pots to help keep from having gnat problems. 3) Consistent watering, preferably from below to keep from over saturating your soil.
For more information on growing vegetables in your home garden, there are some good guides to getting started here.
In the end we didn’t get to plant our first seed starters, but we learned many lessons, determined to try again the next season. Thankfully our new batch of seedlings were successful this year!
We did still have a great garden last year, fueled by many trips to the garden nursery to buy starter plants. It is always fun to find different plant varieties there and try new things! I especially love to find new peppers to try each year. (This year my pet pepper plant is Count Dracula and I love him!) We will take a little tour around the garden sometime soon.
What are some of your favorite things to grow?
