Dense Planting Illustrated - WARNING - Pic Heavy! Latest video 3/17 - transplanting

[nctomatoman]

Best beets I've ever had - my trial last year was a blazing success, and working great agin this year. I seed 10 seeds to a plug - get about 15 seedlings - then transplant them to single plants per plug and let them size up....you just pop them out (I use a pencil and poke them out through the bottom), space them about 3 inches apart....voila! Perfect beets!

[Keiththibodeaux]

Craig, this is great. I have no doubt you have perfected the system of large scale seedling propagation. I have some seedlings ready to bump up now as I experiment with your system. It is late for seedlings here for the fall tomato run, but it will be an effective experiment and refinement for my in advace of the spring garden next year where I will do this in larger scale.

I do have two questions.

Queston 1, just out of curiosity. For someone with needing just a few seedlings, how much time (days) in growth, if any, would you estimate lost with this bump up from mass to single, as opposed to just starting a single seed in a container from which it can go straight in the ground?

Question 2, with the cost of pot, soil, seed, and fertilizer, etc. what would estimate the production cost to be in getting an average 4 inch potted tomato seedling ready for market. This is not including things like transportation, marketing, etc. Just the production costs.

OK, I said 2 questions but one more. What vegetables do you think this would NOT work on. I seeding some Southern Curled Mustard recently witch sent out a very long thread root long before true leaves, which makes me think they might not be suitable, but I am only guessing. Would love to see a proven, won't work, not yet tried list somewhere.

Thanks for your expertise, and for taking the time to demonstrate this to all of us. I look forward to your answers.

[nctomatoman]

Hey Keith - answers to questions....

The first is hard for me to answer since I always do a transplant, and have never just started a seed with the intent of direct to garden. The transplanting process to me makes a stronger plant, as you are burying the stem and allowing more root development.

Second question - also hard to answer. Our charge of 3.00 for a plant is based mostly on what others are charging around us - the old "what the market will bear" thing. The cost of the pot is minimal, as are most seeds - soil is the most costly part, and I don't fertilize at all. But it is very time consuming!

I've found it works on pretty much everything - I've used it on tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, all sorts of Asian and other greens, chard, beets, herbs, flowers...no failures yet!

[Keiththibodeaux]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

Hey Keith - answers to questions....

The first is hard for me to answer since I always do a transplant, and have never just started a seed with the intent of direct to garden. The transplanting process to me makes a stronger plant, as you are burying the stem and allowing more root development.

Second question - also hard to answer. Our charge of 3.00 for a plant is based mostly on what others are charging around us - the old "what the market will bear" thing. The cost of the pot is minimal, as are most seeds - soil is the most costly part, and I don't fertilize at all. But it is very time consuming!

I've found it works on pretty much everything - I've used it on tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, all sorts of Asian and other greens, chard, beets, herbs, flowers...no failures yet!

One last question, since other plants to not necessarily have the ability to root along the stem like tomatoes, on those other plants when you move to 4", do you still shove them as deep?

I am experimenting with the mass seeding on some tomatoes right now. Fixing to move to 4". Will post pictures later this eve.

[nctomatoman]

I plant everything deeply. Even if they don't root along the stem, the exposed stem can be quite flimsy on some types of seedlings, so my theory is that the extra protection of being surrounded by soil certainly can't hurt, and seems to help.

[Keiththibodeaux]

OK, here is my first attempt as mass seeding, in progress, and done very haphazardly at that.

It is late for seedlings down here, so this is may not make it to full production. I took a tomato that I recently ate and liked, an heirloom of unknown identity. I squeezed the seedy pulp into a glass, added water, stirred it up a bit, and allowed to sit for 24 hours at room temperature. The next day I removed the sinkers and dried the seeds for 48 hours. Finally, I planted 30 seeds in the bottom of a 4 inch 1/2 gallon milk carton filled with regular Miracle Grow Potting Soil/w Plant Food, not a seed starting mix. Not recommended I know, but remember this is just an experiment with whatever and I had a bag handy. I covered it with SaranWrap and placed it outside in a shady area. Germination was 100% in 3 to 4 days.

This photo is from 2 weeks later. Most of the seedlings have started to develop their first set of true leaves. Transplant to 4" pots will be done in the next few days.

Stay tuned.

[Keiththibodeaux]

Seeds were moved to individual pots today. Lost a couple of weeks due to constant tropical style rains and no sunshine. Seedlings got leggy on my, but I got them down into a hodgepodge of container with each having 2 to 3 inches of stem buried. Now hopefully the weather will give me a break, but as I said this is a play rather than a serious effort. From what I have seen, I am quite impressed.

Here is my junkyard seedling collection. This is a few hours after transplanting and it was warm, so they are a bit droopy.



And by the way, my success or lack of should be no judgment on this method other than possibly proving it is so good that you can do everything wrong and still succeed.

[ljp]

I planted carrots and beets in raised beds and left for three weeks. Germination was spotty and I was looking for something to plant; but, it's late for most things here. I realized I had some clumps of beets that needed thinning. So, I thinned out the clumps and transplanted the seedlings. I tried something similar with the carrots.

We'll see how they do. If they do well, I'll use dense planting to start both the carrots and beets next year.

[Keiththibodeaux]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

Hey Keith - answers to questions....

I've found it works on pretty much everything - I've used it on tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, all sorts of Asian and other greens, chard, beets, herbs, flowers...no failures yet!

Craig, I am sold on most everything, but even with Carrots? Like the poster above, I have had issues with direct seeding carrots, but have always been told they cannot be seeded in any kind of container and then planted out because of the root structure. To quote our local LSU Agcenter, "you will be disappointed in the results." I would sure love to hear a different opinion on that.

[Keiththibodeaux]

Update, the seedlings are full recovered from the mass separation process, but for a couple, which are alive, but not looking so good. And the two that are not doing well, were put into the heavier soil, noted below.

Note 1 - I left some unseparated to judge the loss of growing time of mass seeding vrs single seeding. I am guessing less than 1 week of growing time was lost, if any.

(Revised 3 days later to say that no time was lost, and again as Craig predicted, the seedlings are much stronger than the ones that were undisturbed. This is no doubt due to them being planted deeper in the new pots after separtiion. Hard to believe as it sounds, it might even be time gained, rather than lost.)

Note 2 - In the transplanting process I used two types of potting soil to put them into. The lighter more fluffy soil had noticiably better results. Craig, you did mention this, but I did not understand its true importance till my experiment.

OK Craig, this week I will mass seed Beets, Cauliflower, Zinnia, etc. And since these seeds may be highly variable in germination I am simply putting the climb rap on the individual 4" mass seeding pots.

[Plantersville]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

Ah - seed vials - I get the plastic vials with the snap on tops from E D Luce - cost isn't too bad.

I have found my empty pill containers work wonders for seed storage. I quit throwing them away years ago...

[Keiththibodeaux]

A side note on this mass seeding technique. This year, I am doing some seedlings mass seeding and others where I only wanted a plant or two of a variety, in Parks Biodomes. I put them all out for some sunshine the other days and some unexpected strong southerly winds blew through. I lost half of the seedling that were in individual plugs, but none of the mass seeded ones. In the mass seeded pots the seedlings supported each other while the ones in the plugs were on their own.

So there is yet one more advantage to Craig's Mass Seeding Technique.

[carpenterlady]

I did the math two years ago on my seedling cost. Seed, pot, and potting mix, came up to around $0.25 per seedling. My pots are smaller 3". I spent about $0.08 a pot last year. And seed costs an average of $0.10, this year. Not included in that estimate is my higher electricity bill, and of course gas to get to where I sell them.

Originally Posted by Keiththibodeaux

Craig, this is great. I have no doubt you have perfected the system of large scale seedling propagation. I have some seedlings ready to bump up now as I experiment with your system. It is late for seedlings here for the fall tomato run, but it will be an effective experiment and refinement for my in advace of the spring garden next year where I will do this in larger scale.

I do have two questions.

Queston 1, just out of curiosity. For someone with needing just a few seedlings, how much time (days) in growth, if any, would you estimate lost with this bump up from mass to single, as opposed to just starting a single seed in a container from which it can go straight in the ground?

Question 2, with the cost of pot, soil, seed, and fertilizer, etc. what would estimate the production cost to be in getting an average 4 inch potted tomato seedling ready for market. This is not including things like transportation, marketing, etc. Just the production costs.

OK, I said 2 questions but one more. What vegetables do you think this would NOT work on. I seeding some Southern Curled Mustard recently witch sent out a very long thread root long before true leaves, which makes me think they might not be suitable, but I am only guessing. Would love to see a proven, won't work, not yet tried list somewhere.

Thanks for your expertise, and for taking the time to demonstrate this to all of us. I look forward to your answers.

[kurt]

About 10 years ago a local nursery down here in S.Florida sold out to a land developer and had a going out of business sale.I went and bought these plug trays that had 35 plugs per tray.The plugs had top openings of 2 1/2" and coned themselves down to 3/4" at 6" deep with a drain hole.Ever since I put one seed per plug and let them grow to about 1 foot then put into final destination buried 75%. This has eliminated all the pulling apart the young seedlings roots and culling the weak from the strong.The survival rate and production was immense.Plus if I see a weak plant or deadhead I can pull and reinstall a new seed.The time factor has been decreased,and seedling loss also.When the babys come up and start leaning I bought the barbecue (longest)and the tobacco pipe cleaning straws for a circular free moving wrap to stop them from intertwining to each other.At the top of the skewer I use the adhesive postal stickers for identification if more than one variety is contained in a row.When the roots show at the drainholes I let the seedling dry out somewhat and then squeeze the plug from the bottom like milking a cow put my finger in the drainhole and the plugs pop out.this way I have 100 %transplant rate cause the culling is done before hand.

[cegeddin]

Originally Posted by carpenterlady

My pots are smaller 3". I spent about $0.08 a pot last year.

Where do you get your pots from?