Winter is approaching and growing winter greens are our favorite time of the year. We have butter-crunch lettuce seeds, Tatsoi, Kale and baby spinach seeds we’ve planted this year.
It’s been roughly 2-3 weeks now and we have many seedlings up. The weather we have experienced has been over-cast, and wet weather mostly.
We have many leggy seedlings up this year, and it’s been a combination of low heat, much less sun, and we have a more rich compost this year from the new compost bin we planted the seeds out in.
We wanted to write this to let beginners know how to avoid getting spindly seedlings that won’t develop into fully healthy greens.
We have been growing vegetables now for many years, but even a veteran grower can make mistakes some times.
Mistakes to avoid
- Plant seeds using a seed raising mixture or peat moss mixture. ( Very low to no nutrients) “Keep moist” but not drenched.
- Make sure you place or plant your seedlings in very good sunlight. (about 7 to 8 hours a day)
- Don’t feed your seedlings too early.
- To transplant your seedlings, plant out into light fluffy compost soil with an organic slow release fertiliser.
- After transplanting, water in with a liquid seaweed plant food. It will stop the shock of transplanting and help the seedling nutritionally.
- Only feed your plants every two to three weeks along the growing cycle of the plant.