When doing this, one thing you need to avoid is getting too carried away or sowing too heavy handedly when sprinkling seed into your carefully prepared seed pots or garden seed beds. Sowing too many different varieties at any one time can also be problematic in trying to manage them properly if they were all to germinate at similar times.
If this sounds familiar, and you have germinated seedlings in a seed pot or tray, you may need to prick them out, carefully separating the seedlings and transplant them into individual pots.
Seedlings can quickly become overcrowded competing for space, water, nutrients and light. They can easily dry out or become stretched and leggy if left too long. Tiny seeds such as lettuce or poppies are particularly easy to sow too thickly, but can do well when pricked out together as small clumps.
Pricking out from seed pots sooner than later is important to prevent the risk of "damping off", caused by a fungal disease that can spread very quickly, resulting in the collapse and death of young seedlings. Sowing thinly or reducing the density reduces the risk of this, as improved airflow lowers the humidity in which fungal spores thrive.
Consider successively sowing seed in small quantities, so you can stagger plantings to give you continual flowering or harvesting of vegetables rather than having too many flowers or veges ripen all at once. Don’t forget it is important to store seeds in a cool, dry and dark environment between sowings to prolong their viability and gardening success.
Garden Life is produced by Dunedin Botanic Garden
For further information contact Kat Lord.
