I'm growing a tree from seeds (I think it's a spruce tree), but one of the seedlings that have come through (the one on the right of the image) has suddenly flopped over and the stem has gone brown.
I'm very lightly watering with a spray bottle every few days, and it's sat in a north facing window, and as it's winter there's not a lot of daylight.
Does anyone know what's happened and how I can stop this from happening to other seedlings?
by Cool_Beans365
4 Comments
Seedlings need a lot of light. The cotyledons, which are the seed leaves, come prepackaged in seeds. They have enough stored resources to grow out of the ground and start photosynthesis for the rest of the sugar needed to kickstart true growth. If you’re growing almost anything from seed, use grow lights to ensure they receive minimum 6 hours of direct light. I usually use a plugin timer and set it to have the grow lights on for 12 hours. That initial emergence of the seedlings and then their first real growth are heavily dependent on proper lighting. Unless something happened to the seed in the soil, your description of the lighting situation sounds inadequate
How many did you plant?
I enjoy starting all of my plants from seed, even my house plants like monstera and pothos lol I just find it very rewarding and relaxing taking care of a living organism during every stage of development. You get to come home and see the new growth and that’s a result of your effort and care. So it’s really cool to see a post of someone doing the same at home with something that most people just buy already grown before transplanting. I bet it’d be really fun to see an evergreen tree grow and change
Also, one the ancestral traits that is common to all plants, is they use heat to regulate their growth rates so that during the colder months when there are also fewer resources, they will slow their growth down so they won’t run out of resources and die. So make sure it’s plenty warm enough for your particular species of seedlings and they have adequate time and heat to grow as strong as they can as early as they can. That’s why seeds in the wild germinate in the spring. It gives them the longest time and exposure to warmth possible before it gets cold again. This means they grow as much as they can before needing to survive their first winter.