Lessons on growing seedlings

So everything is pretty much planted out. So I'll reflect a little bit on what worked this year for growing seedlings and what didn't work.  This year I grew all my vegetable plants from seed except for onions and a bhut jolokia plant. I find it very therapeutic to grow from seed, especially when it is below zero and there is a foot of snow on the ground.

1) Not to overwater- last year was a total mess I watered everyday and had fungus gnats galore. This year practically NONE in my seedlings... yahoo! I consider that success! Where I could I watered from the bottom up (i.e. filling the bottom tray with water and letting the cells wick up the water). I basically watered every 3-5 days.

2) How to use coir/peat pellets- This worked our really great.  First things first... this discussion on peat pellets is incredibly helpful to anyone using peat pellets. The key points of this article are

• When transplanting out take off the netting
• Not all pellets are made the same... they may not be absorbing water in the middle, if you suspect this toss out and use a new one.

I got this really handy tray at the end of last season on clearance. Its a Burpee coco coir pellet tray. It is conveniently labeled with letters along each side and comes with a handy grid so you can easily keep track of what you started.

The simplicity of it made this a huge success... of course the alternative was that I have always made my own potting mix. My logic is if I am buying nice amendments for my garden why should I buy a separate potting mix. At one point I was even sterilizing it (my husband LOVED that ... NOT... ha ha I was essentially cooking dirt in the oven... I think he would have preferred it if it was banana bread). I still need potting mix to transplant up but I think the pellets are here to stay!

3) I did not have adequate lighting for my seedlings- I rely mostly on natural light coming through a southfacing window in my house but supplemented this year with a CFL grow light bulb in a cheap reflector. Definitely helped with the seedlings but it was not enough. I still got leggy tomato seedlings. This is probably just a mental block for me... at some point I'll invest the mental energy to find a economical solution for this... now is just not the time.

4) Even seedlings need some sort of fertilizer- I always make my own potting mix for seedlings and I thought that if I used one part compost I wouldn't have to worry about fertilizer, but this year in effort to battle leggy tomatoes I used a dilute combination of fish emulsion and Kelp fertilizer. It helped the seedlings however more than the seedlings I used it outside to kick start dormant plants outside and I think there it was more useful.

5) Timing- This year I was much more organized as to when I started my seeds but I think I can still use some tweaking for next year. This was my schedule this year:
February 1- my cool weather crops, basil and eggplants
March 1- tomatoes, and chilli/pepper plants
April 1- everything else (cukes, melons, okra, etc).

 I think generally my timing was fine. I am debating starting cauliflower, cabbage, eggplants and chillis earlier next year but not sure whether the poor growth was more a timing issue as much as a inadequate lighting issue.

6) Transplanting up vs planting out- I always seem to have problems with this... especially with tomatoes but this year I grew more things so it was more of a problem. I know your not supposed to transplant certain things like okra but if you live in a temperate climate like mine where weather is unpredictable it ends up being a balancing act between:

• planting out in the garden but keeping them covered
• transplanting to a bigger container and leaving them indoors for an extended period
• keeping them in the smaller container/pellet b/c it may only be one more week

Anyway I just could not manage all 20 tomato plants that I started... they started off fine and well but I just didn't have room to transplant them all up.