Once you have your vegetable and flower seeds planted you soon will have little tender seedlings popping up and you need ot know how to care for them. My Tips for Starting Seeds Step 2 {Growing} will help you care for your seedlings so that you end up with strong plants when it comes time to plant in your garden. If you haven’t planted your seedlings yet and are here reading this post, go to my Tips for Starting Seeds Step 1 {Planting} to help you get started.
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Now that you have little green sprouts popping through the soil, you should be pretty excited. You have germinated your first batch of seeds.
You will be amazed at how fast your seedlings grow, but to ensure that they stay healthy and grow strong you need to give them plenty of light and water.
I have provided some tips to help you ensure success through this stage of growing seedlings. I think the most important thing is light, plenty of it and close as you can get it, preferrably 2-3″ from your seedlings. The second is watering your seedlings, because they are growing in a seed starting mix they will dry out quickly, much more quickly than potting soil dries out. You want to keep your medium moist NOT soggy. Try to water with warm water and to water from the bottom, you do NOT want to get your seedlings wet, just the soil.
Remember to check on your seedlings daily, just a few minutes is all they need, but they need you to check daily, they will parish quickly without your care.
Tips for Starting Seeds Step 2 {Growing}:
- Your seedlings are sprouted and will need a steady supply of water, but should not be constantly wet. Watering from the bottom by keeping your grow containers in a tray. Fill the tray with warm water and your seedling roots will wick up the water.
- When seedlings get their first true leaves, not the tiny ones but the two that follow, start to water once a week with a plant food diluting to half strength. Too much can burn your plants, think less is better for now.
- Do not use water that has been put through a water softener the sodium may kill seedlings
- If you are using growing lights keep seedlings close to light source. When seedlings don’t get enough light they grow long and weak stems. As your seedlings grow raise the light to maintain 2-3” distance.
- Your seedlings will need 14-16 hours of direct light to produce enough food to produce healthy stems and leaves.
- Keep air moving around your seedlings once those true leaves show. This helps to keep fungus from attacking your seedlings. A fan gently blowing steadily will help.
- Once your true leaves show, use a pair of small scissors and cut off the weakest plants in each cell so that you only have one strong seedling in each cell.
You might also like:
Tips for Starting Seeds Step 1 {Planting}
Tips for Starting Seeds Step 3 {Transplanting}
