Just started my seeds. Please help

Ok....I am a newbie.... I have my seeds planted waiting for germination... I decided to try the Christmas lights in non clumping kitty litter...in a tub....
It's warm and getting lots of condensation inside the plastic lids... This is good....right?

Do I open the lid daily to check and make sure the soil is good and moist?

How often should I water them?

Can I use my digital meat thermometer to test soil temps?

I know once they start to sprout up...I need to remove those from the bottom heat and put them on the shelf under top lights....

At what point do I need to remove them from the little cups of seed starting mix....and transplant them into some other kind of soil?
What kind of soil should I transplant them in?

I didn't have any thing to stick in the cups to write in lol...so I used colored straws etc to mark each plant and I have a list with all my info written down....

Next time I plan to think ahead and get something better 😃

Info and tips are greatly appreciated for this newbie!

Hi Grammykaye. I see you’re quite new to Dave’s Garden so I’ll start by saying welcome! You’ll find many friendly folks here who are always willing to help anyway they can.

Question: Is it good that the soil mix is warm and that there is lots of condensation inside the plastic lids?
Answer: It depends on what kind of seeds you’re trying to germinate, but for most seeds you want the soil mix to be about 75 degrees. As for the condensation, you want to see a slight amount of moisture on the inside of the lids, but if you see water droplets that run down the sides, the germinating medium is probably too wet. If that happens, remove the lid for awhile.

Question: Do I open the lid daily to check and make sure the soil is good and moist?
Answer: Checking the moisture level daily is a good idea but if you’ve watered properly to start with and you’re not adding too much heat, the moisture level should remain fairly constant.

Question: How often should I water them?
Answer: As mentioned above, if the moisture and heat is right, you may not have to add additional water at all before seeing germination. Of course, if the surface of the mix appears to be getting too dry, you’ll have to correct the problem by adding a small amount of water.

Question: Can I use my digital meat thermometer to test soil temps?
Answer: I don’t see why not, as long as it covers that temperature range.

Question: At what point do I need to remove them from the little cups of seed starting mix...and transplant them into some other kind of soil?
Answer: I usually check the roots by carefully turning the cup upside down and removing the seedling. When it appears that the roots are short of growing space, it’s time to pot up. Meanwhile (because seed starting mix contains no fertilizer) I add a liquid fertilizer, at about one fourth strength once a week. I usually start that when the seedlings have their first set of true leaves.

Question: What kind of soil should I transplant them in?
Answer: I transplant into a soil mix that contains a small amount of fertilizer. Miracle-Gro Potting Mix, for example, claims to feed plants up to 6 months. That’s probably stretching things a bit but the plants are moved into the garden long before that time anyway.

Hope this is helpful,

Art

This message was edited Apr 18, 2015 2:21 PM

I agree with everything Art said.

If the dome is on, some "fogging" is fine. Big droplets, or droplets that get so big they run down the dome, means too much water is int he soil, and/or the heat is so great it is driving too much water out of the soil.

Leaving the cover off so the water can escape is one way to dry out the soil.

Too-wet-soil is a little bad because it encourages soil fungus which causes "damping off", which may kill some seedlings. The fugus attacks young seedling stems right at the soil suyrface, kills part of the stem, and the seedling falls over dead.

But that's not the worst thing.

Too-wet-soil is REALLY bad because the water displaces air from the soil. Seedlings are exactly like humans in one way: not enough water makes us thirsty and eventually makes us sick.

For most plants, having its roots immersed in water is like a human having his head immersed in water: drowning caused rapid death.

Too much water in soil allows every small and medium-sized crevice and void, "air channel" or "pore" fill with capillary water. When the "air spaces" fill with water, airr can't circulate or even diffuse fast enough.

Oxygen diffuses very quickly through a gas, even the air that fills smallish pores and channels in soil. However, oxygen diffuses very slowly through water, like water-logged soil.

If oxygen can;t diffuse into the soil, the roots suffocate and die, then rot.

Or roots are "smart", and they "know better" than to grow into a part of the soil that has not enough oxygen.

When yo sneak a peek at a root ball, and only find wet soil and few scant white threads, you're looking at a drowning plant. Remove enoguh water so they can breath!

Or go back in time, if you have a time machine, and add less water to start with.

Better yet, go back in time and buy a different soilless mix. Look for a mix that is "open", "light", "fast-draining" or "high porosity".

Best of all, go back in time and use whatever commercial mix you already have . BUT combine that mix with a roughly equal amount of medium-fine shredded, screened pine bark or other evergreen bark. It should be the size of BBs or a little bigger. Like very coarse Perlite, which works almost as well but is more expensive.

Or coarse grit, like crushed granite or #2 chicken grit, works well.

The coarse grains, when well-mixed with typical fibrous commercial mixes, hold the fibers apart and creates many relatively large "pores" or "air channels". A 1 mm gap is HUGE compared to air molecules, as long as it does not fill up with water. They call this "opening up the mix".

You can manually suck the water out of a drowning pot or cell by setting it on top of a wicking, water-absorbent mat like a cotton towel, cotton flannel, denim, or acrylic felt that has had all the sizing washed out of it.

The fabric pulls water out of the bottom of the pot by capillary attraction plus gravity. Water in the top of the pot flows down to the bottom, where the mat keeps sucking it out.

Since the mat will eventually fill up with water, let one side of the towel or flannel hang down below the bottom of the pot, like hanging off the side of a table. Now gravity pulls the water in the mat down to the bottom where it drips off or evaporates. Now the pot releases the rest of its perched water, air can flow in, and the roots can finally breath.

Or you can put the mat in the bottom of the tray your seedlings sit in. Never add enough water to flood the mat! Just get the mat moist, with probably some water sitting in the grooves of the 1020 tray.

Now, as the plant drinks water, capillary attraction fighting AGAINST gravity wicks water up from the mat and into the soil. The soil is never wetter than the mat. When you see they mat start to dry out, add just enough water that the whole mat gets damp, then maybe add a few ounces.

Any commercial mix has plenty of peat to wick plenty well. If you added any bark shreds, they will wick too.

If you worry that the top inch of soil might not get enough water wicked up to it, well, you can still top-water every few weeks just to feel better. Excess water will wick down and out so no one drowns.

One nice thing: say you top-water, and some plants get much too much water, and others get not enough. No problem. The drowners give their water to the mat very quickly. Then the mat transfers that excess to the plants that did NOT get enough water. Everyone has enough, no one drowns. And the plants that drink fastest steal from those that need little water. They all start to go dry at the same time, and no one needs water until they all need water.

http://allthingsplants.com/ideas/view/RickCorey/646/Bottom-Watering-Seedling-Trays-with-Cotton-Flannel-Prevents-Water-Logging/