You can also use a narrow tool - I like a chopstick - to help remove the unwanted seedlings from the roots up - just be careful not to dislodge the seedlings you do want to stay.Īfter thinning and transplanting, it time to water around (never on top) your seedlings with a light water stream.Start at the outside and just pull a few at a time. You can use your fingers to gently pull out the little seedling at the week 1 stage - the roots are small enough that they easily pull out.When you do leave more than one plant, thin to the strongest plant at week 2 or 3 by snipping off the weaker seedlings at the base of the stem with small scissors - by that time their roots will be growing together and you don't want the strong plant disturbed.Then if you do lose a seedling or two after the thinning phase you will have at least one to grow to maturity. At this week 1 stage, it's a good idea to make sure your bases are still covered by keeping 2-3 of the strongest seedlings in each cell.Here are some tips when thinning your seedlings: On quick-to-mature plants like lettuce or spinach that can be planted out when they're smaller, I sometimes leave two seedlings to a 6-pack cell, but for all others, they should eventually be thinned to 1 plant per cell. Or you can simply compost them like we do all our other garden waste. Of course, you can transplant every little seedling and you will be overrun with plants you can't use. You must thin now if you want strong, healthy plants that will survive outside. It's just a fact of starting your own seeds: Thinning is something I know people struggle with, thinking they are killing or wasting the plants. You want to thin the seedlings now in the first couple weeks of life before the roots get too tangled. It was a different variety of Roma tomato, and I was planting other Romas that I knew I could transplant if none came up.Īlso, it's not unusual for some seeds to take two weeks to germinate, like the peppers I mentioned, so sometimes it's not a failure yet! I wasn't surprised by this, as it was another old seed packet - but this time it was 7 years old (hey, it doesn't hurt to try). This is normal - sometimes seeds just won't germinate for some reason or another. The tomato seeds planted here were obviously still going strong, so I just have more thinning to do. However, as I show here, you can keep seeds from year to year and when a packet of seeds is more than 2 years old it's a good idea to plant more to account for a potentially spotty germination rate. When I have fresh seed packets I've just purchased I do plant 2-4 seeds - you can see that there are some pots in the photo with only 2-4 seedlings. It is important to plant 2-4 seeds - not all seeds are viable, which is why you need to put more than one seed in each cell or pot. There are lots of seedlings clumped together (um.aren't you supposed to plant only 2-4 seeds?).There are two things you may notice right away from the above photo: (You can read more about peppers in the Ultimate Sweet Pepper Guide and Ultimate Hot Pepper Guide.) I still start them at the same time, however, since I don't plant peppers until the first week of June most of the time - peppers like it reliably hot. Note on peppers: the peppers aren't pictured because they take much longer to germinate than tomato seeds, about 1-2 weeks longer, so you will have to provide this care for them a little later. You may remember from the seed starting tutorial that I like to plant tomatoes and peppers in larger pots (instead of the 6-cell seedling pots) since they grow much longer inside to have larger plants to put into the garden, and it eliminates one transplanting step. The tray pictured above is planted with tomatoes in 4-inch pots and most of the tomatoes have come up (they're pretty easy).
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