Thinning seedlings & other care tips
Is there any more painful job in gardening than thinning your seedlings? Picture trays of fat, happy seedlings, who all germinated with much better success than you doubtfully sown. That plug of tomatoes bursting full of three plants, when you know, there must only be one. Or trying to thin out your basil…you’ll need to have the steady hands of a surgeon to carefully snip around the other seedlings. It is absolutely gut-wrenching. And it must be absolutely done if you want the best chance at seedling success. If not, you’ll run the hazard of spindly, weaker plants that may not handle transplanting well. And don’t try to be like me in my early days, when I’d gently pull out the superfluous seedling (roots and all) and then try to transplant that into its own container. Sure, my efforts had good intentions, but the reality is, I was disturbing the root system, shocking the seedlings. Best if you just use clean scissors (emphasis on clean…you can easily spread disease this way) to snip off the extra seedlings. I use those tiny cuticle scissors. To help ease the pain of this process, I now feast on a celebratory first harvest of greens of the season, made from all the little lopped-off seedlings.
Up next in SEED STARTING 101, Seed Viability see how long your seeds are good for.