Stunted seedlings

[Chuck]

If you are like me you await with great anticipation for your seeds to arrive. You spend time and money getting your starting mix ready and finally are able to sow your seeds. Your seeds germinate at the correct time and the cotyledon leaves look great but then something happens. Some of the seedlings just don't grow as fast as others. Everything being equal why is this? And what to do? The why is very simple, bad DNA in that seed. If you are like most gardeners you try to fix the problem by fertilization, lighting and temperature. But is it worth it? IMO, No. A weak seedling will grow into a weak plant 99% of the time. It is best to just sow more seeds than needed and keep the best plants, but most gardeners keep the weak ones separate and plant them in case something happens to the strong seedlings. This is also the wrong thing to do IMO. It will still be a weak plant. Throw away all weak seedlings only keeping the strong ones. The reason I posted this is because an acquaintance of mine asked me to come over and look at his tomatoes. Some of them are 1/2 the size of the others with less than half of the production of the others and he thought maybe it was a disease or something. After questioning him I found out that he did not separate the weak from the strong and that he did not grow extra seedlings, he just planted them all. Thought I'd pass this along.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Old seed does this too. No need to buy a big bag of seed if you will not use it up quickly.

 

[Ruderunner]

And yet, I have nearly 2 dozen extra tomatoes growing from seed that fell into the soil last year. Some are almost as big as the greenhouse bought plants.
Otoh, the dill that is growing randomly is doing much better than what I started from seed. None of it is growing.

That said, point taken.