And if they are very leggy, you can prop them up a bit by sticking a toothpick in the soil so they don’t topple over from their own weight.Q: How do I know when I am ready to transplant my vegetable seedlings to my garden outside? My early ones seem about ready. Just make sure they get tons of light and enough water. Ours were very tall and skinny right when they first sprouted, but they filled out eventually. With enough sunlight you should be able to save your leggy seedlings. The cotyledons do contain enough nutrients to support the plants growth from a seed into a small baby seedling, but once it sprouts up out of the ground it will need sunlight to continue growing. They will need sun right away, and you definitely don’t want them growing up into the lid! This can happen at any time during the plant’s life cycle: right when the seedlings pop up out of the ground, once they are fully grown, or any time in between! Once your seedlings come up out of the ground and are about half an inch tall, I would take the lid off the seedling tray and stick them in a window. It is true that seedlings start to get “leggy” if they are starved for sunlight, meaning the stems grow very long and towards the sun with only a few pairs of leaves on a long, skinny, mostly bare stem. This will help the pot drain better and stop the soil from leaking out of the hole at the bottom. Then add a few of the rocks to the bottom of your pot. The little white specks are perlite granules □įirst you’ll want to mix 3 parts potting soil and 1 part perlite in a container with your trowel. So, not necessary but you probably should use it anyway. If the soil is compacted it will have difficulty absorbing water and the plants’ roots can have trouble growing through the tightly pressed soil. Because of some sort of complicated, science-y thing, perlite helps prevent soil compaction. The perlite is not 100% necessary, but it’s highly recommended. pots (I painted the ones in the picture above and added little chalkboard paint labels, you can check out the tutorial here)Ī quick note: Perlite is basically volcanic glass and it’s available at most hardware stores or anywhere you would buy potting soil.So if your seedlings are ready to be transplanted let’s get started! You’ll need: And in the other two pictures you can see that the roots of the basil and the catnip have grown all the way out of the bottom of the pellet! How do I transplant my seedlings? In the top picture above you can see the first true leaves of our basil seedlings. We started ours in seed starting pellets which are a lot smaller, so I didn’t want to wait too long before transplanting or the roots would have run out of room to grow. Top: True leaves on our basil seedlings, Bottom: Roots growing every which way!īut don’t wait too long either! If you started your seeds in a small pot they will have a fair bit of room to grow. So at the very least, wait until your plants have their first set of true leaves before transplanting! Up until this point the plants don’t actually need sunlight they aren’t photosynthesizing because all of their nutrients come from the cotyledons. The next set of leaves that sprout can look very different (look at the close ups of the dill, some leaves are long and skinny and some are frond-y, very different!) and they are the plants’ true leaves. They are basically a source of food for the plants and contain the nutrients the seedling needs to grow. The first set of leaves that sprout out of the ground are called cotyledons and they are actually part of the seed. You definitely should not transplant your seedlings until they have grown their “true leaves”. A lot of people say you should transplant 5 to 6 weeks after planting, but I think there are some better indicators than simply how long the plants have been growing. There are a couple of different guidelines for when your seedlings are ready to be transplanted. Transplanting your seedlings can be really hard on your plants, so you need to make sure that they are strong enough to withstand the shock. Before we get started I want to share some useful info I’ve discovered throughout this process.
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