Gardening, year 3 - starting plants from seed

This is our third year gardening, third year of starting plants from seed, and third year of learning. In my first year, we used the regular seed starting trays you see in any store. I hated them. The plastic was flimsy, the plants got root bound, or the roots escaped into the tray below and got mangled during transplanting. The trays lasted for 2-3 uses, and then disintegrated. Not ideal.

Seed starting trays, one of the available sizes (photo from amazon.com)

In our second year, I used a mix of the surviving trays and toilet paper rolls - save the rolls once you're done with the toilet paper. Then in the spring, fill them tightly with potting mix, water thoroughly, and plant the seeds. Once the time comes to transplant, pop the whole thing in the ground and cover. The cardboard will disintegrate over time. This approach was pretty good for things that don't like their roots disturbed (carrots, peas). However, the rolls got moldy and unpleasant over time, and roots escaped sideways into the tray, resulting in a bit of a struggle during transplanting time.

Ready to go (photo from gardeningclan.com)

This year I came across the technique of air pruning, the approach where some of the plant's roots are exposed to air, after which the tips die and the root branches (here's more detail). The result is a branched, healthy root system, with no root-bound plants.

Air-pruned roots on the left, root-bound ones on the right (photo from geoplanter.com)

There are quite a few different containers and approaches to this, from fabric pots, to planting in shopping bags, to nursery-quality air pruning pots. To start the seeds, I tried two different approaches - one making seed starter pots out of newspaper (instructions here), and one using net cups, following the advice of the air-pruning guru, Larry Hall (here are his FB page; note that it's a closed group and you'll need to be added by the admin, and his YouTube channel).

I bought 100 cups on Amazon (net cups). They're fairly sturdy, and should last quite a few years, especially if I'm nice to them. I made another 100 or more newspaper cups to accommodate the rest of the starters. Silly of me, I didn't do a proper control, where you would plant the same seeds in the two growing containers, to see which one does best. However, so far most of the net-cup plants did much better than the newspaper ones. I did not expect such a difference (and perhaps that's why I didn't do the control bit). But I know that I will be buying another 100-200 cups for next year's season.

Tomato comparison - the best of the newspaper cups is on the right; the left is second-best net cup results. The very best tomatoes have already been moved to larger pots...

One extremely helpful tip that I read about this spring was to use aluminum foil as a reflective surface between the seedlings and the rooms. When growing seedlings on windowsills, they end up bending towards the light source. To reduce bending, the plants need to be turned once or twice a day, which is a chore if you have quite a few of them. The aluminum foil does two things: 1) it doubles up the amount of light the plants receive, which results in shorter, sturdier plants, and 2) it prevents the plants from bending. As a result, the plants only need to be turned once a week, if that - I haven't turned many of my seedlings in weeks now, and they're only slightly off-center...

My tinfoil-hat plants... Cucumber starters in this picture. The shiny side of the aluminum should be facing the window.

The last lesson I learned in starting plants this year is that peppers are exceedingly slow. I started both peppers and tomatoes at the same time, mid-February or so, following the instructions on the seed packets. Next year I'll be starting peppers a month earlier (mid-January), and tomatoes a month later (mid-March). This should allow us to have peppers earlier in the season, and save me the issue of having plants that are too big for their homes and need transplanting into larger pots.

Tomatoes on the left, peppers on the right. Oops.

In the next post, I'll have some pictures about the different garden area I'm intending to use for planting all these things. Yay, spring is finally here!