Vegetable growing technique – pricking out

Yesterday’s post forced me to rummage in the photo folder and see if I have enough action shots for another technique lesson. If this is all old hat to you, feel free to wander off with a cup of tea and watch my potatoes grow. Or admire the cherry blossom.

This little tray of seedlings are agastache Liquorice Blue.  I started off with one packet of these Korean mint flowers years ago. And they have turned into surprising drought tolerant plants.

So every autumn I collect the seeds and store them for spring sowing.

They germinate like mad. And this is the hardest part about being a vegetable or flower grower. Accepting you have to throw away just germinated little seeds. I need to have a crueler streak because I just can’t bring myself to throw away all these little plants. They are future stalwarts in the garden. 

So I prick out as many as I can.  Too many perhaps.  You can see here that they are a matted mess of plants; all fighting for light. So well watered first, I lift out the entire little cell of seedlings and place them on a surface where I can tease out the individual plants.

A chopstick and careful finger work is all it takes.  If you hold the stem of the plant at this stage you will snap it in two. So you grab a leaf and gently tug. And then once free of its friends, you lower them into individual cells with plenty of good potting compost.

If you are lucky (and this was taken when I was sowing eragrostis grasses seeds) you get a little helper who will insist on sitting on his chopping board right in front of the action. He loves the watering bit.