Are these seedlings ready for transplant?
- Thread starter Cramjam
- Start date
Yes, I would plant them out onto a large container or in the ground. Next time, for something like a baby greens/mesclun, you can just skip the seed pot stage and plant the seeds in their final location. I find those long plastic 'windowbox' planters useful for these kinds of greens. You can start harvesting in as little as five weeks after planting. Extend the season and increase overall yield by only picking a few leaves from each plant, thereby allowing them to grow longer and produce more edible foliage.
Thank you soooo much!! I’m pretty new to this whole gardening thing. I picked up some pro mix, could I use that to put in a pot and then place the pellets in?
This is the product:
PRO-MIX Organic Vegetable & Herb Mix
Ready-to-use, this peat-based PRO-MIX PREMIUM Organic Vegetable & Herb Mix MIX is perfect for all your vegetable and herb garden needs.
www.promixgardening.com
Yes, that should work fine.
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Too small and spindly to plant out. Moving will shock too much and they will die. They appear to not received enough light.
Too weak looking. Probably not enough light when growing. The stems are not strong enough.
If you mean you it's too cold in Canada to plant mesclun outside in late September, I totally agree.
...but those seedlings would do fine in a greenhouse, or even a bright window.
...but those seedlings would do fine in a greenhouse, or even a bright window.
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In Canada nothing grows outdoors during Winter. Ice and snow for at least six months.
I expect an OP from Alberta knows that already. Unless Cramjam says otherwise, I would presume he/she intends to grow indoors.
Hi Jade. Your seedlings are quite leggy, which is a big problem with lettuce. Some veggies can grow out of leggy seedlings, but in my experience lettuce isn't one of them. A properly growing lettuce seedling will have very little stem and once you have several true leaves you shouldn't even be able to see it. The reason they're leggy is they're not getting enough light. Did you germinate these next to a windowsill? I made the same mistake the first time I tried to grow lettuce and got comparable results. You can try to growing them to maturity but they're going to be spindly and bolt quite quickly, especially if they remain under the same sort of light. If you want to sprout things indoors it's really worth the money to buy a $50 LED panel light and use that rather than window light. Don't skimp either. There are a lot of essentially useless things sold as grow lights on the internet. In my experience you need something that's at least about $50 and "600 Watt equivalent" or higher to get growth comparable to full sun.
Hello!
Thank you sooooooo much for your input. What can I do? What lights do you recommend? And do you think I should just discard these seedlings and restart? Or should I continue to work with what I have?
Jade
Those seedlings are nowhere near ready to transplant! I lost 48 tomato seedlings and 48 cucumber seedlings last year to overconfidence and questionable advice. Learn from my mistakes!
Paul
Thank you so much! I’ve learned since then. Could you give me some tips on when seedlings are ready? I know some people say once they get ‘x’ tall, then you should transplant, so tried that and all my quinoa plants died…
There is an assumption being made here that transplant size is the primary determinant of seedling success or failure. I disagree. If light, temperature, and soil moisture are correct, transplant size will be of secondary importance, at most.
Seedling size doesn't matter nearly as much as number and size of leaves and a good root system. You want at least six leaves an inch long each before you transplant peppers.
Yes, but be careful to hold the seed leaves, not the stems