High Cost of Seed Starting

Kay, what would you think of lying the seedlings on a surface and using a light spray (and I mean light, maybe a squirt bottle) of water to wash away any soil that may be binding the roots together? Then, carefully, replant with fresh potting soil.

- Bill Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Now here's an example of someone in good faith trying too hard to be grammatically correct. Why the lie/lay problem is so intractable, I fail to understand. I notice even good writers, especially younger ones who never learned grammar, get confused.

There are two separate verbs, so don't make them work so hard. EacH one has a different job to do.

"Lie" is intransitive- meaning it does NOT take a direct object.

I LIE down to sleep.

but

I LAY ME down to sleep. This transitive verb does take a direct object: "ME".

and

I LAY the WREATH at the gravesite. Object is "Wreath"

and, in this post,

You LAY the seedlings on a surface...

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Here's where the fun begins -- in the past tense.

Intransitive verb TO LIE does not take an object

Present: I LIE down to sleep.

Past: I LAY down to sleep.

(incorrect: I LAID down to sleep.)

==========

Transitive verb TO LAY does take an object

Present: I LAY the wreath at the gravesite.

Past: I LAID the wreath at the grave.

Easy to see how the confusion arises. But once learned, the rule becomes second nature both in writing and speaking.

(Whew! Wipes brow in utter exhaustion...)

Persephone

the seedlings on a surface and using

I'm inclined to agree with you;-) You sound as if you could use a really good lay down:-O I hope someone learned from my mistake. I shouldn't get in such a hurry. Well, I hope that's been laid to rest. But, I suspect that I'm prone to do it again.

- Bill Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (bad jokes, free of charge)

I tried that once... all it got was severely tangled roots. Ditto my attempts to wash the germination medium off the soil in a bowl of water. I find the "grab a cotyledon on each of two plants and shake them gently apart" method works the best for me, and it's what I've seen "pro" greenhouse folks do when planting (at my best, I could never keep up with the pros in seedling transplanting.)

I have gotten much better over the years at sowing seeds in seedpans in nice straight lines with some space between the seedlings. We shall not mention the year I sneezed and blew about 1000 petunia seeds into about 4 square inches of soil. That was Not Fun to disentangle.

I'll "reprint" my old summary of how I start stuff from seed in a separate post.

Kay

It's a really bad idea. Why would you want to do that?

Sherwin, please forgive me for butting in, with a non- gardening idea....... but if you have an electric hot water heater, check to see whether you've lost one of the heating elements ( most hot water heaters have 2 elements for quick recovery capacity). You wouldn't necessarily notice this right off in your hot water supply, but you sure would notice it in your electric bill if one element was doing all the work of 2.

When I did condo/rental unit bill reconciliation, a huge spike in a bill like that was usually a tip-off that it wasn't "use by resident", or "weather related", it was an element failure in the hot water heater.

If I'm baked on the suggestion, call it just a suggestion, and never mind.

Sue in Maine

The term that's used for "getting right onto the job of growing" is "vigor". Seedling vigor is one of those terms that everyone thinks they what it means, but no one's ever been able to put a test number on to quantify. If that sort of thing interests you, you might want to poke around in Agricola for "vigor testing".

Then there are the species and cultivars that you expect to have a certain percentage of stunted seedlings that go nowhere...

Kay

Sherwin, I'll let you know. Right now I have 6 cells of astragalus - basil mixes. I'd like to save as many of each as is possible.

- Bill Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)