From Seed to Sprout

For your seeds to mature, you need a process to aid them along in their journeys in becoming sprouts, and finally seedlings. Here is a guide to giving your seeds their first home in becoming healthy plants.

The Seed Ecosystem

Seeds are susceptible to the environment you place them in. As I discussed in my “It’s All about Seeds” post, quality of seeds and proper seed information should give you some idea of what that plant needs. Labels and packages are so essential for this reason. Things like temperature, sowing depth, and time of year to plant are present on the seed packages.

Well, for indoor growing, we don’t care about the time of year. Weather and temperature are the main reasons to grow indoors! You can typically ignore the seasonal information because you control the environment of your plants. For example, I was producing 3 gardens through blizzards here in NY this past this past season. The plants are entirely oblivious to the outside weather. Our indoor plants haven’t any idea of the misery we humans have to trudge through in the outdoor world day to day. But, if your garden destination is ultimately not indoors, then you should consider the label’s instructions to avoid the cold weather seasons. Some plants don’t care so much about temperature, like spinach; it has been seen to grow through pretty much year-round conditions. However, getting the seeds to germinate indoors still requires a bit more care and control over temperatures.

The Essentials For Germination

For the germination stage creating our seed germination ecosystem is very easy to do. It only requires a few things to get started. Space, oxygen, humidity, grow media, nutrients, and darkness for a little while. We talked about how to choose grow media in our post “Indoor Grow media”. Catch up on that informative topic so you can have some good idea of what I’m referring to here.

Seed Sowing Space

What we use indoors here are 1020 flats or trays(spoken “ten twenty”), which refers to the 10" X 20" sized tray for planting seeds. You can hear some refer to these as “standard” trays. There are other sizes as well. Be sure to buy whatever is appropriate for your grow. These are not all created equal though, as some manufacturers make them slightly different than others for different grow media reasons. These are pretty easy to wash and are reusable. Just be sure of which trays suit the needs of your grow media.

Under the dome

Humidity domes for 1020 trays come in 2 sizes, one is the standard size and the 7" propagation dome, but for this article, we want to focus on the standard humidity domes. Your humidity dome is meant to collect humidity and condensation. Your standard dome should have adjustable vents to allow you to open your tray to the room over four days slowly. Adjust a quarter turn open each day. We call this process “hardening off.” That just means you are getting your plants used to your room where they reside. Completely remove the dome after five days. If you remove your dome too soon, it could hurt the plant’s ability to grow. If you leave it on for too long of a time, it will warp the plants due to excessive humidity.

Grow media

Make sure your seeds are sown down in the grow media at the recommended depth. We are replicating the environment for the seed that allows it to feel at home. Some cover the seed with Vermiculite to allow for a lite topsoil. Vermiculite isn’t always needed, but it is recommended for water retention. Depending on which grow media you choose, pick the appropriate inserts for your 1020 tray. Inserts will allow for more organization and promote oxygen flow to your plants for downward root growth and upward stem growth. These inserts can also help with water drainage.

Oxygen

It’s important that with whatever grow media you choose for sowing, the grow media has proper oxygen flow. Aeration promotes root health and allows the plant to reach out in the root system as it sprouts. Good oxygen flow is a sign to your seed that it’s ok to grow. Most 1020 trays and inserts are made to help with oxygen flow.

Water

You should have a fresh source of water. There are so many variables and ways to get, clean, PH balanced water for your seeds and grow media. It’s also vital that the grow media isn’t too wet because this will drown your seed. Proper drainage is a must for consistent growth of the seed. (More on this in a later post).

Here are some things needed for getting your seeds ready in water.

Soak seeds in water for 24 hours and let them dry prior to sowing them.

Mix in your liquid nutrient fertilizer into a bucket

Add nutritional supplement(if needed)

PH your water to around 6.0–6.5

Lightly water your grow media in your PH’d water.

Add nutrient PH water to your tray to help create the humidity and condensation.

Heat mat

The heat mat is another essential, as it is made to control warmth for your germination process. These heat mats can help you make accurate decisions for plants that like it cool and plants that like it warm to germinate. Some seeds will not grow if it’s too hot. It’s encoded in their genetics. So be mindful in reading the packages to find out what your specific seed’s need is. Please use heat mat temp controllers with heat mats so you can control the output of the mat.

Heat Mat Controller

Heat mat controllers regulate the temperature of the mats so that you don’t heat up your delicate seeds too much. If you make this mistake, you could end up with plants that aren’t germinating.

Light

Some people have different beliefs about placing seeds under lights. Some say do it right away. Some say wait until you see the sprout. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I leave my light off for the first two days, and I turn it on for the remainder of the time until I get some sprouts.

Here you want to use lights that are in the blue (vegetative) spectrum of light or full spectrum 4000k and above. If you wait too long to light your plants or if your light distance is too far away from your tray, your plants will start to look “leggy.” Leggy means the plants are stretching for the lights. We don’t want that as it leads to weak plant stems. Let’s focus on getting that light low and right above the humidity dome. This way the plants get sturdy stems and healthy root systems.

The sprouts are coming

So, as you can see, once you have the proper equipment, sowing will become a much more natural process. If your seeds are correctly labeled, and you have grow information from the seed package, your seeds will sprout. Be patient while your seeds are working. Seeds can take seven days or more to germinate. Soon you will enjoy watching seeds grow into healthy thriving plants.