You Sprouted A Seed! Now What? 🌱 || Seedling Care Tips & Maintenance Plus A Seedling Update!

Something I feel like is missed in the seed starting process is how to care for your seedlings … seedling care tips and seedling maintenance. So let’s chat about how to take care of your seedlings, plus an update on all of my seedlings.

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Planting Zone 8a Wylie, Texas

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Hey y’all it’s Amanda and this is my Texas Zone 8 Garden and today I wanted to kind of address a lot of questions people had about starting seeds because I think that we watch YouTube and we see a ton of wonderful garden they’re starting a bunch of seeds and then maybe

In a few months we see them plant the seeds outside I wanted to talk about what happens between the planting of the seeds the starting of the seeds and when you’re actually moving them outside to get them started so today we’re going to be going over seedling maintenance tips

And I’m going to be giving you an update on all the seedlings that I’ve been Growing okay so I think that’s something that I have a hard time finding information about on YouTube or social media is what happens in the middle right we started sewed all these seeds and then you see when they start planting them out but you don’t see a lot of what’s going on

In the middle so what I wanted to talk to you about is basically some basic like maintenance and care tips for your seedlings now I’ve got a ton of seedlings going I’ve got everything from like just beginning to sprout to I maybe within a two weeks of potting up to

These are my patunas that are just killing it they’re looking really really good so we’re going to talk about a lot of different aspects from the very beginning of seedling all the way through so let’s just start from you’ve sewed the seed you’ve got humidity Dome on you’ve provided whatever heat mat or

Whatever it all needs and you have a Seedling and it sprouts what do you do next one of the big things to do once more than 50% of your seedlings have sprouted in your container you can wait till further along like 60 75 if you want once those have sprouted you want

To take the Dome off the seedlings and if your seedlings are in a stable environment where it’s fairly warm and consistent like inside of a house you want to remove them from a heat mat now the reason we want to do these things removing from a heat mat is a lot of

Seedlings need the heat to go ahead and germinate but they don’t need a lot of consistent heat to continue to grow and if you’re somebody who is doing growing inside like what I am my house is typically between the 68 to 72 Degree range so that works really well if

You’re somebody who is growing in a garage or a basement or something like that you are a whole different ball game you are going to have to judge for yourself how cold it gets in your garage and in your basement and you will have to heat your seedlings accordingly once they’ve sprouted you

Don’t necessarily have to heat them with the heating mat you can heat them with a general like heat heater in the area or like a room heater something along those lines if you would prefer to instead the reason that we don’t leave seed Lanes on a heating mat forever and ever is

Because a lot of times it warms up too much it’s too hot for the seedlings and it’s going to push them to grow quicker faster or grow grow faster which sounds like it would be a good thing but not necessarily because they can cause them

To grow too long too quick it can cause them to be um going through water too quickly um it can for force them to grow more foliage and less Roots there’s a lot of different things leaving them on the heat mat the whole time can cause

And we don’t leave the humidity Dome on the whole time because that’s how we build up algae and mold and we lead to lead to different diseases like dampening off so your seedlings have germinated now we’ve removed the heating mat and the humidity Dome what do we do

Next well there’s a few things that we need we need to make sure that we have really great air circulation what do I mean by that I mean putting in an oscillating fan so that your ceilings get a little bit of Breeze I have a ceiling fan in here that whenever I’m

Not filming I turn it on high in this room and it creates a breeze throughout the whole room which works really great this is a really small room so that that works really well for me but I highly suggest something like an oscillating fan now once you get the oscillating fan

Going you don’t want it right up against your seedlings you want to have it back and you just want to see a little bit of movement with your seedlings and that helps create really great air circulation and helps up fight off a lot of diseases that could happen to your

Siblings the next thing we need is light light is super important seedlings need minimum 12 to 14 hours of light per day and right now it’s in the depths of the winter sunlight isn’t enough there’s not enough hours of sunlight a day so we use artificial light so I’ve got a couple of

Different sources I’ve got some of my LED lighting here and then I’ve got some old school like um shop lights that I use as well and those were great I have all of mine on a timer and they come on at like I think 6:00 in the morning and

Then they go off at 10 so I believe that’s right about 16 hours of light is what mine are getting um and which works great I wouldn’t suggest like doing like constantly give them a little bit of a break they need a moment to sleep as

Well but at minimum 12 to 14 hours of light now one of the important things about light is the proximity of the seat Lings to the light and right behind me is a really good example because you guys can see that I’ve got this one shorter shelf right here and I’ve got my

Seedlings and they’re only a couple of inches from the light which is really good because I’ve got the light close enough that the seedlings are not reaching for the light and when the seedlings begin reaching for the light they become very very Ley and it’s almost impossible to bring them back

From the brink at that point you can even see on this shelf right here where I’m further away I’ve put some lifts underneath here to get the seedlings closer to the light because that’s going to be better for the seedlings in the long run so you definitely need to think

About that proximity to light as these seedlings get bigger right I can move them further away from the light I can transfer them up here or whatever I need to do once they’re getting up to where they’re touching the light another important maintenance tip for caring for your seedlings is thinning seedlings and

I know that’s not something that a lot of people enjoy it it annoys me to death I always overseed yet when they sprout I feel terrible thinning out the seedlings here’s the deal with thinning out the seedlings you have a small little cell that these seedlings are in you do not

Want them battling one another for the nutrients for the space for the water what you want to do is eliminate it to just one strong beautiful seedling and allow that guy the absolute best chance where he can do it all on his own have all the water water supply he needs have

All the nutrients have all the space instead of battling with additional seedlings now there’s a couple of ways that you can thin seedlings you can certainly just take a pair of scissors and just trim off a Little Seedling no problem that’s really really easy you just trim it at the base I highly

Suggest not pulling on a Seedling because when you pull on the seedling you’re deser you’re um disturbing the roots of the other seedling beside it then finally a lot of people let their seedlings grow on a little bit they take the whole cell out and then they kind of

Pull apart the earth and the roots to create two seedlings and you can do that as well and then plant those up or pot those up into the next biggest container now a lot of people are like but when’s the best time to thin seedblings do I do

It right after they sprouted no my usual suggestion is to allow the seedlings to develop a first couple of leaves maybe one or two sets of leaves after that point you’re going to be able to kind of tell which seedling looks stronger and better and that’s the seedling one you

Want to use and the other seedling you want to cut out or separate okay so now our seedlings have sprouted we’ve taken the heat Dome and the heating mats off we’ve made sure they have great air circulation and wonderful light where they’re close to the proximity of light

We’ve also made sure that we have thinned out our seedlings and that they are good to go and they’re not battling other SE seedlings to grow so what next well seedlings when you’re utilizing something like seed starting mix or even just some basic potting soil there’s not

A lot of nutrients right in the beginning that the seedlings need within the first you know couple of weeks of their life I would even say more five to seven days of the beginning of their life after that you do need to start hitting them with some liquid fertilizer

And when I say liquid fertilizer I mean something like Alaskan fish Emulsion let me show you what I use I use Alaskan fish fertilizer emotion smells terrible but it works really well because I just put a GOP of in in a container coner and um add water and um dilute it out and

Then at that point I feed all of my seedlings with this and I bottom water all the seedlings with this the seedlings cannot go weeks and weeks and weeks without some kind of fertilizer so if you’re kind of looking at your seedlings not really going they’re not

You know they’re kind of stuned in growth it might be that they actually need a fertilizer and that’s something to consider especially if you’re using sieg starting soil like the specific mix for that that has zero nutrients in it whatsoever so you are absolutely going to have to supplement with a liquid

Fertilizer so while we’re on the topic of fertilizing and I was talking about watering them with the fertilizer let’s talk about watering so seedlings need to be checked every day you really need to be checking them every day and you need to be making sure that they’re well

Watered and still moist we do not want our seedlings to dry out most seedlings cannot handle that with the exception of something like a lanthus my lanthus likes to dry out maybe a little bit of a day and then rewater it but most seedlings are not like that they don’t

Want to dry out at all so when I’m watering I have most of my seedlings in some type of reservoir tray just like this and I just pour my water into the base of the tray I always try to water from the bottom so bottom watering pour

It into the tray and allow the sealings opportunity to suck up the water that they do need you do not want to leave tons of standing water in these trays pretty much you should just like let allow them a few hours to suck up the water and then come and drain the water

Out now I say that but I’m terrible about remembering that so A lot of times I do allow mine to sit and maybe half an inch of water and then it evaporates over a day or something like that that’s me that doesn’t mean you need to do that

Too and I will say that doesn’t always work for me on that sometimes I lose seedlings because I have them too wet okay so now our seedlings are fertilized and well watered so what do we do next when they start getting bigger at that point in time you’re really

Looking at to transition them or pot them up to the next size of containers a lot of people ask how do I know when the time is to move the seedlinks to a bigger container it’s kind of a little bit of a guessing G in my opinion um I like to

Make sure my seedlings have a well established root system before I move them to a larger container A good rule of thumb is if your seedling gets maybe you know if this is the height of you know your seedling cell your seed cell right here and your seedling gets a

Couple of like two times larger than that it’s definitely time to move it over I like to wait until I can see the roots in here whether it’s on the slots on these Veo ones or whether it’s in something like these other containers that are you can see because they’re

Clear I like to check and see how big the root system looks and go from there and if I’m really able to see those roots then that’s the time it tells me I need to pot them up traditionally when I’m potting them up I did a whole series

On my um petunia seedlings I repurpose all the plastic containers that I get from like nurseries for all my annuals and stuff and so I repurposed them and I put them into these larger containers typically if you’re going to do that you’re going to want to use a general

Potting mix at that point in time you can go ahead and mix in something like a fertilizer like a granular fertilizer slow release fertilizer or you can mix in compost at that time I just do potting soil and then I add my fertilizer with my elastic and fish

Emulsion and that works great for me cuz I mean look at these patunas they absolutely gorgeous okay so you’ve potted them up into the next container they’re continuing to grow on but you’re not ready to plant them outside and they start making flowers look at this right

Here I don’t want my plants to start producing flowers whether they’re vegetables whether it’s animal flowers peral flowers anything like that because when they’re producing flowers they are putting focus on making flowers not building a root system and I want them to build a strong root system so

Whenever I see that they have begun to create flowers I typically will come in and cut them off this also allows me to do a little bit of pruning that will encourage branching especially for something like EP petunia we really want it to Branch out you don’t want it to

Just grow straight up and down straight up and down is not what we want we want to contines to spread out beautifully so I’m just going in right now I’m cutting above a set of two leaves and I’m just trimming out all of my uh flowers buds anything like that

And I know it’s exciting like I’m not going to lie I’m super excited to see these flowers I can’t wait this is really awesome but the reality of the situation is I’m not ready for it to be spending all this time on flowers I want it to spend another good month getting

Bigger and better root systems and then I want it to start budding up because in about another month or so I would say actually towards the end of February I will be getting prepared to start transplanting some of these outside transplanting them outside but what I really mean is putting them in a

Greenhouse outside to get full on sunlight and at that point in time I’m all up for them beginning to flower so you’ve seen me kind of go when I do have to check on these patunas probably every 2 to 3 days as they are continuing to

Grow quite a bit I’m very happy with them I’m actually going to slow down the fertilizer typically with my fertilizer I like to fertilize maybe every two weeks with the liquid fertilizer I’m going to slow that down on my patunas because they’re doing so good so um

Eventually what I’m going to do is try to pot them up into like a gallon size and maybe put three plants in one container that’s what my eventual goal is with the patunas but we’re not quite there at this point all right so I was just talking about real quick about

Patinas that are growing straight up you can see these three right here are growing straight up so I’m actually going to go down pretty far and Cut Above a set of two leaves and force these to Branch it looks really dramatic and painful but it actually will be

Really great for the plant doing this as opposed to allowing it to grow straight up Okay so we’ve gone through all the basics of your seedling maintenance or your seedling care tips all the way from from the very beginning when we take off the humidity dome for the first time to

When we are starting to pot them up and pruning and getting them prep to go outside now at this point our seedlings are getting to the point where they’re going to be transitioning to go outside and that is going to be a whole separate video from me because I feel like once

You’re taking them from the inside to the outside it’s a whole different ball game so all of my tips are just for growing inside right now or in your basement or in your garage or whatever this is before they end up going outside into the wild of your garden okay let’s

Go ahead and hit on a few things or a few issues you might run into with your seedlings and how you can troubleshoot or diagnose what is wrong with your seedling okay let’s say you your seeds sprouted and within a few days they literally just die and fall over that is

Typically dampening off dampening off is basically like um a fungus kind of issue disease bacterial I’m not sure which but it’s something based basically where the seedling is suffering from some kind of mold or something at the base of the stem which basically kills the stem kills the nutrients separates the top

From the root and then makes the whole plant fall over the best thing to combat dampening off is to make sure you remove the humidity dones as soon as possible after sprouting and to make sure you have excellent air circulation and also make sure that your seed linges are not

Just sitting in water all of those things lead to a buildup of mold algae bacteria the whole thing and so making sure that we have those three elements going will really help prevent the dampening off process okay let’s say you have a beautiful seedling it looks great

One day beautiful green and a couple of days later it’s yellow like why is it yellow typically when a Seedling turns yellow it’s because they’re overwatered so what you need to do is lift it out of its container um make sure the container is nice and dry inside the reservoir the

Water reservoir remove any extra standing water from it and give the seedling a day or two to kind of not dry out totally but give it a opportunity to become less water logged before you begin rewatering again so yeah if it turns yellow typically it’s because it’s overwatered okay another problem I hear

People asking they’re like I started my seedlings it sprouted it looks great but it hasn’t grown in weeks and months it’s so tiny and it seems stunted and it’s not doing anything that could be a couple of things one that could absolutely just be the nature of that

Particular seedling and plant so make sure you research it such as something like a lizy anthus you um start those they sprout and then they sit there for weeks and weeks and weeks and don’t get any bigger totally elantis thing I’ve also found that to be true with violas

And pansies they sprout and then they just hang out forever so really look up research what supposed to happen with that seedling first before you go on to the other things the other option is that it could be under fertilized so you might need to be hitting it hitting it

With the fish Emulsion I’m not saying it every day I’m not even saying every week maybe every two weeks at the most I tend to do more like every two to three weeks is when I am fertilizing mine as well you’re fertilizing with a very diluted solution we don’t want to overwhelm our

Seedlings now it also might be spended because the location that you’re growing your seed in is too cold and so it’s going to grow at a way slower rate than if it was in a little bit of a warmer situation I find that my seeds grow inside pretty well because they are

Typically at a 68 to 72 Degree temp but if you’re someone who’s growing in a basement or garage there are times and hours of the day it’s going to get pretty cold in there and the seedling is not going to be triggered with heat to grow instead it’s going to be

Consolidating all of its needs staying small so that it can survive the colder temps now a lot of people ask what’s a good temperature to keep a Seedling at typically you want to keep them between 70 and 80° however I know that that is not always functional for everybody

Depending on your location like I said for all my gardeners growing in basements and um in garages you might set up a space heater to warm your area up a little bit or you might not really be concerned with your seedlings getting really gigantic yet maybe you just

Wanted to get them all started and maybe you want it to stay cool and you want them to stay nice and small for now and then as you get closer to your spring maybe you start heating up your space at that point to bring on the growth on the

Seedlings and one more thing I hear people talking about seedlings is Ley seedlings that is seedlings that have gotten really tall and thin and stretched out that is a lighting issue that means your seedling needs to be much closer to the lighting Source if I were to take these little seedlings

Right here and put them on the Shelf where they’re a foot away from the light they would all get super super tall and thinck and probably not survive so it’s very important to have your seedling within a couple of inches of the light as they grow you can raise your light or

You can lower the seedling container whatever works best for you but yes that’s typically the issue with long leggy seedlings okay so we went through all the care and maintenance tips for seedlings I hope some of this helped you all out and I hope the last few things

That we hit about potential issues and problems with the seedlings hopefully that answered a few questions as well now what I want to do is just give you an update on the seeds seed LS that I have started how it’s going whether I failed or succeeded and what they all

Currently look like okay so I currently have four trays of um patinas and they’re all looking really good I’ve only got three I only pulled three out to start off with um everybody’s growing beautifully like I said I am having to go in and cut off blooms or trim back

And prune to make sure that they don’t get too big too quickly um I am very very happy with the siblings they look great I do not think I should have started them in December I think I should have started them towards the end of December or beginning of January I do

Think I started these too early but I had heard it took quite a while for ptinus to get going that ended up not being the case these got going beautifully um and I haven’t really had any issues with them so far they’ve been really great we are getting to the point

Where I’m going to need to start potting these up to the next level and that will be a whole video that I’ll show you all okay and while my patunas have been a smashing success my Bonas have not um I maybe had less than 10% germination rate

I’ve got four right here in the um illumination series that did Sprout and are doing well and over here in the a Mera hybrid ruffled Coral I have two they’re very hard to see one right there one right there I did have another one but it got

Um issues with dampening off and you can see like the algae and mold starting to grow on this which tells me that I need to take this guy out and just give him an opportunity opportunity to dry out so I’m actually going to remove him and

Stick him back here for a day or so and allow it some time to um process so that was two varieties I started I also have two more over here that have not sprouted at all and I mean it’s been weeks and weeks at this point so I don’t

Think anything’s going to happen this was another container of the illumination mix and then the other one was the Amira hybrid piik te lace pink and neither of them sprouted or gave me anything so I think we’re pretty much done with this so out of

2448 I got 1 2 3 4 56 six out of 48 so not great on the Bonia front okay my next set of seeds are my dollas that I’m growing from seeds I’m growing pom pom dollas showpiece double mix dollas and double extreme dollas and we’ve had really great germination rate these are

Actually getting a touch dry so they need to be watered and I’ll do that after the video but everybody’s looking really good these are about two weeks away from having to begin thinning them out a little bit but they’re looking really nice and I’ll probably hit them

With fertilizer this next week to really kind of encourage their growth but so far I’m very happy with the results of the doia seeds Okay this next one is a mixed tray of seeds we have one over here which is the Bonia piik lace and it’s got one

Tiny itty bitty little little Bonia seed in there or Bonia plant in there and then next to is the Bonia Amira hybrid ruffled Coral salmon and I’ve got two of those so now we’re up to 50 60 60 start uh six uh let’s see 60 72

Starts and I had 1 2 3 5 six 78 eight out of 70 nine nine out of 70 so real low germination rate next to it back here I’ve got my Kus kalacha Sunset and it looks like we had about a 50% germination rate although there’s still some additional seedlings coming up

Right here those are looking really nice in front front of it I’ve got my sparkler 2.0 blush clei and we had 1 two three four five cells so we only had about a 50% germination rate however some of them have two seedlings so I can move them around if needed as they

Continue to grow right beside it I have baby blue eucalyptus and it looks like we had two not come up but several of the other ones have multiples in them so almost 100% germination rate these are super sweet and they’re doing great as well very happy with all of these

Keeping them as close to the light as possible all right this tray has mostly colas back here we’ve got the black dragon colus it looks like I had maybe 75% germin germination rate for it back here next to it oh did I have two of

Those yes I had two of those so there’s one set right here and here’s another one this was almost 100% two of the black dragon back here I’d have wizard velvet red and I would say May maybe 50% and these seeds are definitely lagging behind everything everyone else they’ve

Taken a little bit longer to go this one up here is also the ri wizard velvet red and I only had like two or three out of the whole container so the red the wizard velvet red did not have nearly as good of germination rate as the other

Ones right beside it I have the Kong um colus which I was very excited about and it looks like we had almost 100% germination right here in this back here we have an additional set of Kus colacha Sunset that I had like in the other container and we had 100%

Germination right back here so these are all doing really really well y’all told me that I would really enjoy these because once they start putting on their true sets of leaves you actually start seeing their color so I’m really excited to watch these uh colus grow okay next

Are my scabiosa and it has not gone well with the scabiosa so um this balet Bonnet scabiosa I started um let’s see well I’m trying to remember how I started these I don’t think I’ve had any germinate for the bileet is that right I can’t remember how I seated these but

Yeah I don’t think I’ve had any on either the packets for the bileet have ger neither none of them are germinated for the Mero red scabiosa I’ve only had one Sad Little Seedling germinate for that one and for the salmon Rose scabiosa I’ve had 1 two 3 4 about 50%

For the salmon uh Rose this one back here has three in it so I can separate out these seedlings to give me a little bit more pretty disappointed in the balet Bonnet um let me know if any of youall have grown that if you had any issues with the seedlings starting but

Yeah and it’s time I really do these seedlings are getting big so I really need to take the humidity Dome off I might leave this one a little bit longer but I I just don’t think anything’s going to happen at this point um they’ve had more than enough time to sprout I

Might put these on a heat mat for a day or two see if that helps out let me give that a try Okay and then the last one I had was a little bit of a different starting technique um in that I basically have this I created this D or

This situation where I’ve got holes in the bottom and um I I have water in the reservoir below it and basically what I did is humid them and I sprinkled this whole area with alysom seeds I have not had as many germinated as I thought and I’m starting to have some um dampening

Off issues where some of them are dying so what that tells me is that they are too wet so I’m just going to go ahead and yeah there’s too much water down here pour all that water out give this a little bit of opportunity to drain some

More and then I think I’ll open my humidity Dome a little bit and see how that does see if we can’t get some more going I might actually even leave the humidity Dome off since this is so moist but we’ll give it a try and see what happens okay so feeling

Very good about the seedlings I definitely have had some failures along the way I knew Bonas was going to be tough I didn’t know it was going to be that hard so it’s all right L’s and learned we’re working on it I wanted to try it out and see what happens I did

Get some and hopefully I can grow those on and they’ll be good to go but I hope you enjoyed hearing all the care tips for seedlings it’s something I feel like we miss quite frequently like how to take care of them from the point that they sprout till they go outside that in

Between point is actually very um important to the quality and strength of the seedling that you’ll be putting out in your garden and I hope you enjoyed seeing the update of all my seedlings and how they’re doing as well give me an update on your seedlings have you had

Failures have you had successes do you have questions is there other things that we as gardeners can help you out with regarding your seed starting just let us know and drop a comment below all right y all as always make sure you like comment and subscribe to the channel

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Gardener or decorator or anything else that she wants to be thanks y’all