Heretical Seedling Handling

[TychoMonolyth]

When I start my garden veggies and flowers, I grow in a great garden mix that never fails. I spread my seeds 8 to 10 per flat white styrofoam flats (6"x10" ?). If you've ever been in a garden center in the spring, you've seen those white flats everywhere with veggies and flower seedlings.

This is what I mean by White Styrofoam Flat:


When I'm ready to plant my garden, I flip the flat over and the whole block drops out. I rip those sucker apart. Yep, just tear the plants apart trying to be gentle enough with the roots, but I'm pretty rough with them and break some. So one flat gives me 12 individual plants that each get their own space in the garden. Everything grows big.

Here's the heretical part: Can I do the same to my pot plants? Like gently pull them apart from the common growing medium? Can they take that?

If I can grow them in flats and pull them apart, that would be awesome.

 

[MJPassion]

Yes you can & they would love the breath of life breathed into those seeds.

You may suffer from some transplant shock but yeah, there’s no reason you can’t do what you propose.

 

[gaiusmarius]

for sure that works, have even used a nife and cut plant root balls apart, as long as they still have a root ball and the plant is not broken they will do fine.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Nice. It's going to make transporting my plants to my site real easy. I'll let them dry out a bit and water them in the ground.

 

[hamstring]

The idea sounds good but I would change one thing. I do something similar and when you pull them apart dry and put them in the hole dry it can be a real shock. By the time you get 10 or 15 plants in the ground they are all wilted.

I would water the plants in the container at the site and let the soil become saturated before I tore them apart into individual plants.

I'm not saying they wont survive if you don't but there is a lot less shock/stress if you water them first.

 

[Betterhaff]

I’ve grown multiple seedlings in small pots or solos and when ready to transplant I just cut the medium with a knife, trying to get as much of the individual plant’s roots as possible. It might slow them up a bit but they take off shortly. Cannabis is a pretty hardy plant.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Makes sense to water them once I'm on site. While I wait for them to hydrate, I have work to do. I'll be using a bulb auger on a cordless drill (I have several large batteries) to drill the holes and drop a handful of my mix in the holes and top dressing (water crystals, epsom salt, ferts, etc). That's about an hour so they'll get split up then and stuffed in the holes.

Power Planter Auger

 

[Limeygreen]

You could try using paper towel or wax paper, parchment paper to make sections between the soil to lessen transplant shock. Cut the material the size you want per plant, tape it with scotch tape, put in your flat then fill with soil, just make a ring and not cover the bottom of course.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

You could try using paper towel or wax paper, parchment paper to make sections between the soil to lessen transplant shock. Cut the material the size you want per plant, tape it with scotch tape, put in your flat then fill with soil, just make a ring and not cover the bottom of course.

This is Genius. Thanks.