This is a question for the more experienced growers. I have lots of seedlings that I started in the small six pack and four pack seed containers. The seedlings have now filled each segment with roots and are at the true leaf stage.
What size pot should they now go into? Would like to know diferent people's experiences as I keep reading about moving seedlings up to BIG pots.
Joydie
When and What Size Container to Pot Up Seedlings to?
Not sure about seedlings. i do have 2 cuttings of JY, rooted at same time, same size. the one in the 2 gallon pot has leaves twice as big as the one in the 1 gallon pot.
Arlene,
When they rooted did you start them in small pots and then immediately move them to big pots or move them up gradually?
Joydie
joydie, I have mine started in six packs too. I was putting them into 4" pots when the first true leaves appeared but they outgrow the pots quickly. I have a bunch of them to pot tomorrow and will be putting them into 1 gal. pots this time.I would probably have used two gal. if I could have gotten through all the snow to the back shed where I have them stored.
No, i always root in 1-3 gallon pots nnow, depending on what size pots i have available. they grow faster from the start for me, course this is outside in pretty nice weather, north florida. did a bunch last summer like that, in 2 months the ones in 3 gallons were almost twice as big as the ones in 1 gallon pots. i buy potting soil by the truckload, cubic yard i think it is, at a time.
Joydie
i used to move the seedlings up to 4.5 inch pots then to gallons. Now I just stick the seedlings into gallons as soon as they have true leaves. They grow much faster.
Cala, Arlene and Snow,
Thanks for the information. I have gallon containers in the basement that I can use. I guess I'm going to have to order cubic yard bags of triple mix soil. In a couple of months I'll move all the cuttings and seeds up to 2 gallon containers before I can take them outdoors in May. At that time what size container should I use outside? I want to keep them in pots so its easier for me to bring them indoors. I don't have any real planting space for them in the ground unless I dig up my front lawn...hmmm now that's an idea as I'm allergic to freshly cut grass.
Joydie
Joydie, can you get a brand of potting soil called Berger? It's really good and they have several different mixes. I use anything from 5 gallons to 25 gallon containers for my big brugs.
joydie, If you can't find the kind that Cala mentioned you should be able to buy the large bales of compressed ProMix. It's made in Canada. That's what I use.
Feel free to call me cheap - but I start small, go to 4inch then to gallon. Sometimes within 3 weeks. I hate throwing a lot of soil out if a plant doesn't make it. I can't order soil by the truck load because my brugs are 120 stairs down a cliff. Wheelbarrows weren't designed for stairs. If they survive the 4inch pots within a month, then they go to the big pots. 1gal-to 5gal - as big as I can find as quickly as possible. Glory taught me that.
liz, i am real bad. if a cutting doesn't make it i stick another in the same pot. 120 stairs...wow!
Yes Arlene - it's my own personal stairmaster. Groan!
Liz, I wondered if your brugs were at the top or bottom of those stairs. I don't reuse my potting soil, but I do put it in the compost pile as long as the plant didn't have pythium. I have a place to dump the "bad" soil, under some trees where poison ivy grows, I'm trying to kill it, lol.
My options are to give them bigger pots... or light? I don't have the room under my lights to move everything into gallon sized pots. I'd have to move them to other areas in the house where they wouldn't get very much light. I had planned on waiting to move them up until I can get outside into my greenhouse - hopefully in about a month. Maybe sooner if the weather stays mild. What's more important... light or bigger pots?
I plant mine directly from the plant cells into the ground or at the bare minimum 1 gallon pots. Each time you move them you can stunt their grow though so make it worth while.
Cala,
When I pot up other plants I take the entire root ball including the soil and plant in a bigger container. I toss the potting soil mixture in the compost, but I vermicompost. The vermicompost quickly turn my nasty clay-like soil into black loam within a few years. My garden plants are now like super plants and are really healthy and very tall. My poppies grow nearly five feet tall and my peony blossoms are huge and lushous as are all other plants since I started vermicomposting.
Liz and Arlene
I may be considered cheap as well as sometimes I reuse potting soil by sterilizing it in the microwave in one of those big plastic roasting bags you see advertised on television.
I guess I better invest in some 25 gallon pots for the summer. I have so many plants now including seedlings and cuttings that if I start buying a few at a time it won't put such a big dent in my budget later.
Joydie
Joydie, I too take the root ball when transplanting, trying not to disturb the roots too much. We did vermicomposting here for several years when we raised rabbits. It was the only way to compost the poop really fast and did wonders for my clay soil.
I have a friend that's been experimenting(yes, it's contageous so you guys should watch out) with the vermicompost to root things in. So far, so good.
Call me cheapest of all, but i don't throw out new soil that had a cutting in it for a couple of weeks that doesn't root. i have been told you can run a bleach solution through soil to sterilize it by one who should know, guess she does. if i were doing inside plants i might do different, can't keep anything alive inside.
This message was edited Tuesday, Feb 26th 9:09 AM
Cala,
I bought the worms for vermicomposting. They consume kitchen scraps, leaves, grass anything that is not meat or dairy related. They eat the equivalent of their own weight 3 times a day. Within 3 months they multiply and it soon becomes difficult to keep enough vegetation to feed the little suckers. Last summer I frequented the discount bins at the grocery store and bought cheap leafy vegetables to keep up with them.
After our first snowfall melted I dumped out almost a cubic yard of vermicompost on my back flower beds so after rain or snow it would leach nutrients into the soil below. My spring bulbs are now 6 inches tall and coming up thick and plump this time unlike past years. We have so much rain now its like April its hard to believe its suposed to be winter. The temperatures are up and down like a yoyo.
Because the worms don't live under cold conditions one has to keep them indoors in containers until summer. The vermicompost is completely odorless. I may try rooting in the vermicompost...never thought of that, but for sure when I pot up these seedlings and plants to big pots I'm going to use the vermicompost with all the fertilizer in it.
Joydie
OK,I give up ,what is vermicompost,sounds like you're composting vermin,rats,mice,ex-husbands......
I do believe I will have to get some of them vermin for my yard. Sure they can't survive in the soil as long as the ground doesn't freeze. I think walmart sells em in the fish bait section...those should work right? Or is their a special breed that works better? What about feeding them fallen Brugmansia leaves loaded with pesticides?
CC,
Vermicomposting is using special worms to eat all vegatation scraps. The common name used for the fertilizer is "worm castings". They are not the garden worm found in the ground that comes to the surface when it rains. Ground worms live under the surface and form tunnels in the soil.
Worms used in vermicomposting live in the compost heap you create. They live in containers of any sort and need air holes punched into a lid to keep them alive. They feed on anything that is non meat or non dairy. One can purchase them from verimcomposting suppliers. You have to overwinter them indoors if your temperatures drop towards the freezing point. I started mine last January indoors in a plastic top bin I bought at Home Depot. In the summer I tossed them vermicompost into a big black compost bin that we can purchase up here. You still have to turn the mixture to bring the worms up to the surface as you continue to add more material for them to eat. I fed them kitchen scraps, brown and green leaves, and grass, lots of coffee grounds and tea bags...they even eat finely shredded paper.
Joydie.
I know this a well known and respected form of composting but it sure sounds funny when you describe it this way. Kind of like pets in a box.
ok...here goes. "Vermi" is Latin for worms. The type of worm that one uses is called "Red Wigglers". You can generally buy them by the pound of by #'s of worms. They do not tolerate a freeze as they live above ground in any sort of bin or container. One can actually grow them just to harvest for selling.
The beauty of vermicomposting is that the worm castings and all of the vegetation one feeds to the worms to eat is essentially completely ORGANIC and that is why I use this method.
Glory
Feb 26, 2002
Cala,
Is this the same stuff as we discussed buying at the co-op here?
OK,how do you get the worms out of the compost?
CC,
YOU PICK THEM OUT, lol.
What I do is I use one of those flats that you get from the nursery that have a mesh design in the bottom. Any garden centre will give them to you free if you buy lots of potted plants. I always look for the ones that have a meshlike design in the bottom. I then just dump the vermicompost into the flat and sift it. I don't really care if the little tiny baby worms go through the mesh, its the big adult ones I try to save as they will reproduce more readily. I then just toss the adult Red Wrigglers into a bucket to start another batch of vermicompost. Save a quantity of the vermicompost to start another bed.
STARTING VERMICOMPOST
1. Start with the largest plastic lidded bin you can find.
Punch holes into the lid to allow entry of air.
2. Finely shred newspaper into the bottom of a container along with some of the castings. The newspaper forms the nesting bed for the worms. You can also use dampened peat moss, chopped plants, dreid leaves, straw, grass clippings, aged animal manures, ground cardboard for the bedding. Moisten the bedding so that it feels like a well wrong sponge.
3. Add kitchen scraps, brown leaf material and green leaf material/grass cuttings. The smaller the size of the grass cuttings the better it works. Be sure to adjust the brown and green vegetation accordingly to produce a good ratio of nutrients.
I use the same method as lasagna gardening, putting the vegetal material in different layers. I save all my brown leaves that I rake up in the fall and keep them in plastic bags either for vermicomposting or as mulch on my flower beds in the fall.
I do the same with grass clippings by mowing over them several times until them are cut into really small pieces. I then leave the grass clippings on the lawn and rake them the next day after the sun has dried them out and they have less moisture in them.
4. Toss the worms gently into the vegetal material.
5. Continue to feed Wrigglers on a regular basis, occassionally turn the nesting bed to bring the wrigglers back up to the surface. They will then eat they way back down towards the nesting bed.
I keep a plastic bag in the kitchen or you can use a plastic bucket to put your daily kitchen scraps in. This is a partial list of what you can feed them
Coffee grounds, tea bags, vegetable and fruit waste, finely crushed egg shells, straw, half dried leaves,nut shells, weeds (before they go to seed), wood ashes, wood chips, sawdust(non treated wood), filters, corn cobs and chopped plants,
DO NOT USE
charcoal, coal ashes, chemically treated grass clippings, crabgrass, dairy products, diapers or sanitary products, diseased or infected plants, fats, meat scraps or bones, oil or oily foods, pet wastes, rhubarbs stems and leaves, unshredded woody yard wastes, watnut shells or leaves.
6. Dig any of the waste that you add into the nesting bed.
Temperatures
The worms prefer temperatures between 4 and 27 degrees Celcius (48-80 degrees F). They can live outdoors until temperatures drop to 4 degrees C (40 degrees F) They can be taken indoors or the can be kept in very very insulated bins.
Uses
1. Sprinkle into a seed row when planting.
2. When transplanting, add a handful of vermicompost to the hole you have dug for the plant.
3. Use as a top dressing, sprinkling the compost around the base of your plants.
4. Mix with potting soil (half and half) for house plants.
Where to Get Red Wigglers?
Any place that sells fishing bait or vermicomposting distributers.
Quantities per household (guideline, adjust as you wish)
1/2 people..0.5 kg (1 lb)..bin (45x60x30cm)1.5'x2'x1'
2/3 people..1.0 kg (2 lb)..bin (60x60x30cm)2'x2'x1'
4/6 people..1.5/2.0kg (3/4 lb) (60x105x30cm (2'x3.5'x1')
Joydie
This message was edited Wednesday, Feb 27th 11:25 AM
Now, can't you cut them in half to create twice as many worms? Or is that just starfish...?
Brugman,
As far as I know..no one can't.
Red worms are extremely prolific. It takes about 3 weeks for an egg to develop and as many a twenty babies can hatch from one egg. In 3 months the worms are sexually mature and will start breeding. Within a year from a mere pound of worms you will have enough to give away to get a friend started.
Joydie