Seed Starting
Packages of Seeds
Seeds and Soil media with some containers planted in
Cold/Warm/Moist Seed Stratification & Scarifying Process
A Scarifying step with a file or soaking of seeds in warm water softens seed coatings to be able to sprout from their hard encasements.
Cold Stratification
Heat Mats
Using heat mats is a way to speed up germination of some seeds. Having these mats on 24/7 until 75% of seeds have sprouted and then moving your seedlings under lighting has worked best for me.
Seed Starting Mixes
Grow Room Spaces
To the left is how I started - 1 shelf back in 2017.
The size of my grow room has changed since then and will continue to grow as I do.
Soil Blocking
Seed Starting pucks or pods - I do not recommend them as the netting doesn't decompose within the year, I learned to remove the net barrier before inserting into the ground for the roots to be able to grow outward.
Sowing seeds in media without blocking or dividers can be a fine option if you can separate later in the next growing stage. Some plants however do not like their roots disturbed.
Lighting
Gardeners and flower farmers grow their own seedlings for transplant. Doing this indoors can help reduce the cost of buying, heating and maintaining a greenhouse. Although starting seedlings indoors, also requires the use of artificial lights. Knowing how to use artificial lighting to grow seedlings can be challenging.
Below we will address some of the questions and challenges about growing seedlings with artificial light while helping to understand light and how it is perceived and used by a plant.
First, one quick bit of science:
Light acts both like particles and like waves.
How much light a plant receives over the course of a day is called its “Daily Light Integral” (DLI). We measure DLI as the number of photons that hit a square feet over the course of the day, and we count the photons in “moles." One example: (How many photons are emitted by a 100 watt bulb? =3. 07×10−14 photon.)
What this means for us is that:
We can count the particles (called photons)
We can measure the waves. We measure them by how long they are (called wavelength). We see the different visible wavelengths as different colors, and we see all the visible wavelengths mixed together as white. A fancy purple horticultural LED (which is actually a combination of red and blue wavelengths) may only need to run for 10 hours to accomplish the same level of growth, while a cheap purple LED may need to run for 34 hours per day, which is not possible.
How much of the light in the wavelengths that is useful to plants is called the light Quality. The Intensity of a light, within the wavelengths that a plant can use, is called “Photosynthetically Active Radiation” (PAR) (also known as “Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density” or PPFD) and it’s what we measure with a horticultural light meter.
Without a PAR meter, we need to let the plants tell us if they are receiving enough light. When a seed germinates in low light conditions, it “thinks” is it beneath a canopy of competing leaves, and it will elongate its stem in an attempt to “stretch” above the canopy to reach the sun. Once a stem is stretched, adding light will not shrink it back down, but adding light may prevent further stretch. If more light is needed, your options are to: buy a lamp with better Quality, buy a lamp with more Intensity, increase the number of lamps over the crop, lower the lamp closer to the crop and/ or increase the amount of time the lamp runs each day.
How long the plant is being lit between dark periods is called Daylength. Daylength is used by the plant to tell what time of year it is, and mostly relates to flowering and fruiting responses. It isn’t terribly important for the production of most seedlings, except for things that need to be kept in a growing phase before they enter a flowering phase
Keeping the lights close to the plants and raising the lights as the plants grow is a technique to get the most light out of our fixtures. You can purchase adjustable light hangers designed for this purpose. Keep in mind that most fluorescent light fixtures have a “ballast” at some location along their length, and that this ballast often produces much more heat than the rest of the fixture. The plants under the ballast may require water much more frequently or may even burn from the higher temperatures.
In general, seedlings should receive roughly 14 to 16 hours of light each day. This can be very difficult to achieve even with a south-facing window, so most gardeners opt to use artificial lights for their seedlings. Grow lights should be left on for 12 to 16 hours a day
Looking at the purple lighting (red & Blue) it looks like the seedlings are at a dance club. I have done some comparisons between light sources and haven't found many differences. I tend to rotate them until I find a tray of seedlings does extra well under the mixed light colors. Red radiation (around 700nm) is considered most efficient at driving photosynthesis – especially in the flowering stage for biomass growth (important to Cannabis growers). Blue light is essential for both the vegetative and flowering stages of plant growth, but mainly for establishing vegetative and structural growth.
No 'One Way' is the "Right Way', whatever works for you is the way to go.
You can find links to products I use, that I have bought and recommend.
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For more information on seed starting and when to start which seeds, Farmer's Almanac is a great resource! Click this link - https://www.farmersalmanac.com/seed-starting
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