Growing Pains

April 2025 Produce Parable
By Adam Calder, Wheatsfield Produce Manager

There are many benefits to starting your own seedlings. It is economical, as a packet of seeds readily provides a family with enough food for a season for just a few dollars. The cost is even lower if you save your own seeds from year to year. The variety of available seed packets vastly outnumbers the available seedlings for sale at garden supply stores, so you can pick exactly which plants you want to grow. It is fulfilling and rewarding to prepare a seed tray, moisten the soil, gently push the seeds into it, then sit back and wait while something magical happens. It is awe-inspiring, and a little bit thrilling, each time one of those seeds turns into a tiny green plant somehow strong enough to burst up through the soil.

Starting seedlings is not completely idyllic, nor problem free. There are many things that can go wrong with your baby plants, so here are a few tips on how to move past these hurdles.

Spindly/leggy stems (the term for this is etiolated) are a common seedling problem, and are caused by two reasons. The first is inadequate light, the second is temperatures that are too high. When light levels are too low, the plant grows quickly (but weakly) toward whatever light is available. When the temperature is too high, the cellular activity in plants increases as well, and this causes rapid, weak growth. Lowering the temperature and increasing light levels with artificial lighting will help solve the problems.

Temperature also effects root growth, as does moisture. If it is too cold, the roots will not develop well. Roots will also not grow properly in soil that is too wet or compacted. Setting a tray of seedlings in a tray of water, and then removing the seedling tray when the soil has absorbed the water, is a great way to water without over watering.

When moisture levels are too high, mold can grow on the surface of the soil. When moisture levels are higher than 85% in the soil, the botrytis fungus can grow and thrive. This fungus is responsible for damping off disease, which causes the seedling to collapse where the stem meets the soil, wither, and die. Maintaining a consistent watering level, with a focus on not over-watering, is the best defense against damping. Once damping has happened, there is unfortunately nothing that can be done to save the seedling.

So, is it worth it, working through all these problems to start your own plants? I look at it like this: when you are holding a seed in your hand, you are clutching the latest link in an unbroken chain of life that extends ages and eons into the past, back to the beginning of life on this planet. Countless generations of plants germinated, grew, matured, procreated and died, in cycles that repeated again and again. I say yes, that chain is worth maintaining.