One of the problems with planting seeds as early as I did this year is that technically it’s not warm enough or light enough to be starting to grow things. I’m lucky in that I’ve good size windowsills that have radiators under them so I generally get away with it. But this year I’ve run into a small problem. Leggy seedlings.
You get leggy seedlings for all kinds of reasons; not enough light, no moisture in the soil or too much heat are the normal worries.
I’ve no real clue what the problem is with these, most of my other seedlings are just fine but the ones in this corner seem to be in some kind of competition for growing the quickest. Some of them are literally scraping the top of the propagator, already!
It’s actually early enough in the year to just start again with these, but, I like to do my little experiments with these things and so I thought I’d try and do something with them instead.
As I said, I’ve no real idea why they’ve done this. I spray water on them every other day. The light must be OK or the others would have done the same. And again, the heating must be OK or they’d have all done this.
So, I decided to bury them up to their leaves as though I would if I was potting on from seedlings normally.
This will apparently promote root growth from the stem and help give the plant a better chance of growing normally.
It was a delicate operation for sure, I’m well aware that these are fragile little things and some haven’t even got their second leaves yet. But, I was careful and I took my time with them, so, hopefully they’ll be OK.
It’s also best to note that you leave plenty of room to water them. The leaves need to be a good inch or so above soil; you might drown them otherwise.
When I had done them all I put them back on a different windowsill to give them all the help I could.
Fingers crossed they’ll be OK!
This is why I never sow my chillis before the middle of February! I have found the consistent light provided by the (height-adjustable) Garland Growlight House I use to be invaluable.
I hear what you’re saying Mark, it isn’t the best place to find yourself in but I think doing this definitely helps so it is worth keeping in mind.
This is the year I lost all my labels so I never could follow this article through properly as I intended at the time. I do remember that while I could keep track of them they seemed to be coming along quite nicely.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. That was a fun year :-/
Chilli seeds only need warmth and humidity to sprout, so once they do I move them to an unheated propagator. Then, over a few days, I open the vents and then gradually lift the lid to wean them off the high humidity. As soon as they get into the unheated propagator, the greatest requirement is good light. And this is where many growers make their first mistake. They forget, or do not understand, the Inverse Square Law. Science and gardening? Oh yes. So you have a daylight spectrum lamp/tube/LED array and you put it over your babies. But where you put it makes all the difference. Light from, for example, 2 feet, will give one quarter of the energy to the seedlings, compared with it coming from 1 foot. At 3 feet, only one ninth of the energy. And a lack of light energy causes the stems to stretch to get closer to the light source. And that makes leggy seedlings. My example talked of feet, and that was necessary with old-fashioned HPS lamps as they generate a lot of heat so had to be kept away from the seedlings so that they didn’t cook them. But modern CFLs or LED lamps, generate very little heat, so can be placed a lot closer, a couple of inches is typical. But what to do with leggy seedlings? I moved away from seed compost or coir jiffies, and started using rockwool for a couple of reasons. The first is that rockwool is sterile, so much less chance of one of the Damping Off fungi growing and killing the seedlings. The second is that they can be transplanted with no root disturbance. Leggy seedling? Just drop it (still in it’s rockwool nursery) into a small pot and top up with microwave-oven-sterilised seed compost to the cotyledons (seed leaves). Then back under good light.
Top tips there Graham, thanks!
I’m going to invest in lighting for next year.
I’ve had a disappointing year this year for one reason or another (smaller than usual amount of plants, weather has been all over the place etc.) so I’ve decided that next year I’m upping my game finally.
I opted for a February start due to poor weather forecasts. The plants would have been too big to keep in the living room under lights until the night temperatures rose above 10c in the greenhouse. But I already have ripe Carolina Reapers which are supposed to be very slow pod-formers! I suspect that locale has a lot to do with how fast they produce, and we’re in a weather island that helps keep the temperatures up sooner.
I’ve been especially daft this year and sowed a few varieties – komodo dragon, Bulgarian hot carrot, candy cane and sweet banana sweet peppers and a mini sweet bell plant.
To help them get through winter, I got a “relassy cob led grow light” – it clips to a surface and you point them at the plants. Up to now I’ve only had it at quarter power for preventing leggy seedlings (providing them with about 3-4 hours of extra light per day at about 6w actual power consumed). Now I’m using it for 3-4 hours still at half (and sometimes full) power (12w or 24w consumed) to help get the plants as strong as possible for the darker months. It seems to be working! As a control, I had two komodo dragon seedlings (from the very same chilli) away from the grow light and, although not especially leggy, they are significantly smaller, perhaps 25 percent or so. All of them have started trying to bud so I keep nipping them off to get more leafy growth and branching… Love the blog, will bookmark and update you as to summer-sowing progress! (goal being early crops next year – so many of my peppers, sweet and hot, just are not ripening this year).