So this is the second year my daughter and I are trying to plant a vegetable garden. I still know very very little about vegetable gardening.
Last year’s garden didn’t turn out so well. So this year we are starting our seeds indoors.
Three weeks ago my daughter planted seeds in starter cells. She planted squash, cucumbers, onions, and peppers. She also planted tomato seeds in larger containers.
She had many more seeds than available cells. So she planted many seeds (twelve in some cases) in each cell.
So now, in most of the cells, there are many plants growing. I’m not sure what to do about this. In most of the cells containing onion seeds, for example, it looks like there are a dozen onions growing in each cell!
You have to thin them out. Pick the best looking plant and pluck all the rest.
P.S., I have trouble doing this with seeds I’ve planted outdoors because, well, I don’t wanna kill the plant. The ones in the growing cells, not so much.
Most plants resent being planted lots to a cell, but alliums are actually quite happy to be crowded when they’re small, and just planted more widely spaced when you put them out. You can actually buy them locally with a lot of seedlings in a small pot like that, and it doesn’t seem to do them any harm.
That said, they might be a little too crowded if they’re going to be inside much longer, but taking them down to one per cell would be literal overkill.
The other plants will need thinning down to one per cell, but just seperate the onion plants out when you plant them out. They might be a little smaller than if they’d had a bit more space as seedlings, but they should still be fine.
O.K. … dumb question time again… when it comes time to plant the onions in the ground, should we separate the onions and then stick them in the ground a few inches apart?
In other words, let’s say there are 12 onions growing in a cell. Should we remove the potting soil around all 12 onions, separate the onions, and then plant the onions 2 or 3 inches apart in the garden?
That should be OK, a bit further apart though. I’ve never had quite so many seedlings in a wee pot, but as long as you can untangle them they’ll probably be fine, onions are pretty robust. It’s an adventure, growing stuff.
I think generally yes (though that is quite tight spacing, 4-6 inches might give bigger bulbs), so long as the roots aren’t too big when they’re moved, as they don’t cope so well with being transplanted when they’re bigger. Make sure they’re hardened off well before they go out too, of course.
Alternatively some people apparently plant entire modules in one go, with 5 or 6 onion seedlings in- supposedly you get more total weight, but smaller individual onions from the space that way. I’ve not tried it, but that’s what my gardening book claims!
“All gardeners know better than other gardeners.” - Ancient Chinese Proverb
I’ll be curious to know how your squash seedlings do once transplanted. A master gardener told me recently that squash does better when sown directly in the ground. If you do transplant squash, at least do so before the roots reach the outer limits of the pot.
If you are having trouble starting a successful vegetable garden, you might try peas (which can be either started in pots or direct sown, in my experience.) Hard to mess up peas, and generally they’re frost tolerant.
