thejesses
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New to gardening

I'm going into my first real year gardening, got a late start last year, and am starting my seeds inside this year. I was wondering what the benefit was for starting seeds in a tray with small pots and transplanting them into the larger trays vs just planting the seed in the larger trays to begin with.
Thanks for your input.

treehopper
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I generally try to transplant only twice, once from germination to individual "hardening" trays and next into the garden...space is the main factor

thejesses
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If you move all the germinating plants to hardening trays they end up taking the same amount of space as planting them in the hardening tray to begin with. Or is there a downside to germinating in the hardening trays?

treehopper
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I start 2-3 seeds per cell to germinate-once they sprout, I move 1 per cell in the hardening trays...start out with 1 tray germinating, end up with 2-3 trays for hardening off...make sense???

GardenGnome
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So all the trays are just cell trays but you go from using 1 tray to 3 and each plant has a cell?

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rainbowgardener
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One of the reasons for me is heat mats. Many seeds, most of of what you might start indoors, germinate much better with extra heat supplied. I run two heat mats each with a tray sitting on it. I don't want any more because of the power usage. So I crowd the cells in the trays with lots of seeds. Once the seeds are well sprouted, they come off the heat mats and more seeds go on it to be germinated.

Once the little seedlings come off the heat mats, I spread them out to each have their own cell, because they are too crowded to grow well the way they were. Then once they are getting crowded in the cells (rootbound and/or leaves shading each other out), I transplant to 3" pots. Once the weather is right for them and they are hardened off, they go in the ground or the large container they will stay in.

Some of the larger seeds/plants, I skip one of those steps, either plant them one per cell to start or move them directly from heat mat to 3" pot.

GardenGnome
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What would you use 1 gallon pots for? I got abunch from someone moving.
Over 100 or so I thought people went from 1cell to 3 then to a bigger pot.
I was wondering to myself that's a lot of dirt. I also got 100 plus 3 inch pots from the dollar store so ether way I'm set. RG do you use lights ? Or just a sunny spot.

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rainbowgardener
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I don't have room under lights for gallon pots. If I use them for anything, it is usually tree starts... You know you can get free or nearly free trees from Arbor Day Foundation? But they are little whips. So I put them in pots for a year or two and plant them in the ground when they are a little farther along.

GardenGnome
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Sorry that was two diffrent questions but ill check out the free trees. It said 10 bucks for 10 trees.

GardenGnome
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Sorry that was two diffrent questions but ill check out the free trees. It said 10 bucks for 10 trees.

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rainbowgardener
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that's nearly free! :)

oh two different questions. You mean do I use lights at all? (not gal pots under lights). I thought we had that conversation and you saw the pictures of my set up with the two 8' shelves, 4 shop light fixtures over each shelf.

I'm not in Calif! I couldn't have anything much growing this time of year without lights.

As it is my first shelf is about full of flats of seeds and seedlings and I will be starting on the second shelf pretty soon.

GardenGnome
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Sorry about that yes I did.



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