Help With Growing Seeds

I have a relative who works for a company that produces vast numbers of plants for the Lincolnshire brassica fields.
All the plants are produced in enormous greenhouses and he rides around on a Segway.
Automatic machines fill the modules with growing media, add one pelleted seed, water the trays and place the trays under lights, the trays are moved regularly along the greenhouse towards the dispatch area. The only human intervention is in the dispatch area where any non germinated modules are replaced with a plant. The trays are then stacked onto trolleys, dispatched to farms where planting machines take the trays and plant the plants automatically with a shot of fertiliser at the root.
Forty plus years ago plants were grown in nursery beds, pulled by hand, counted into boxes typically 100, 500 or a 1000 often depending on the plant size. They boxes were then taken to the field and a gang of 4 or 6 people would be sat on a planter, taking the plants placing them in a wheel that would drop the plant into a furrow which was closed by a pair of wheels under the seats.

 

I am very tempted to get one myself, are you saying you are going to put more than one seed per plug then if so do you pull the weakest out and just let the one strong one grow, so avoids having any blank plugs? What sort of medium do you use to grow?

I do think it is an ingenious invention. How long do you think it will take between planting the seed to get a plug?

 

Have you seen this guy, for sale for £1600. What would you use for other than growing some illegal class B’s?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C66Z1...=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWxfdGhlbWF0aWM&th=1

I imagine these are bought in the horticultural scientific community like Wesley, but come on you ain’t going to marigolds in this?

 

Its mainly a question of capacity; a means of getting many things started all at once, and then growing them to a stage which can be moved on to shelter pending the arrival of more ameniable weather which permits planting out can be done.I have an electric propagator(to 26 deg) which holds ten half trays at a pinch, a glazed grow-bed with under heat and grolightsthat maintains 15 deg C and two small 8x6 greenhouses without heat, plus two cold frames for hardening off

 

Thanks @infradig. It's obviously not for me nowadays as I no longer have sufficient space to bring on too much stuff before planting out in either cold GH or garden

 

@GreenFingeredPete well I'm going to try sowing 1 seed per plug, but I'm clumsy! If more turn up, I would try to carefully separate them - I bought some rather expensive tomato seeds so I don't want to waste them. I grow lots of different things - exotics, annuals like Ammi, and so I wouldn't necessarily keep them in the plugs until full - the rate of growth can be so different.
As for the fancy tent assembly on Amazon, there's only one crop worth buying that for! Last year my partner (a builder) had to repair a rental property that had been used for "crops" until the police raided. Apparently for criminal charges, the police value the crop at over £1000 per mature plant in a 30l grow bag...
The advantage of the repair job is I got 120*30l fibre growing bags, lots of compost (and roots) to improve my soil, and loads of fertiliser. The sacks are great for potato growing! Unfortunately there weren't any nice propagators - the farm apparently bought plug plants online...

 

I dont grow plug plants as such but I do grow multiple seed in cell trays, mostly works for onions for me.
With most plants where you dont want hundreds I still find sowing in a 4in pot and pricking out into the trays the best way, plugs are too small for me so the cell trays work better.

Its no hardship pricking out a dozen tom seed into trays and gives you the chance to bury the stem to some extent if you need to.

 

I have bitten the bullet and bought one as a treat, but not the £1600 one. Looking forward to doing around of sowing of old seeds this week, with no great expectation of plants surviving as cannot harden them off, so just want a bit of fun and that bit of excitement when that first green bud breaks ground. I still plan to start growing next month.

I did think Class B cultivation for a bit of ganga or was thinking it gets used in science, when they bring species from aboard and the like?

 

When I used to volunteer at the botanic garden, plants from abroad just got put into the appropriate greenhouse - cool, intermediate or warm. Those black tent structures are, I'm sure, structured to avoid people seeing what is being grown under very intensive conditions

 

Have you received your propagator yet? Just wondering if it had a heating source inside?

 

Yes, they can block nosey parkers but they are superior for keeping heat in and the insides are reflective to maximize the efficacy of the lights. I have 2 that are 4x4 feet square. One is now chockerblock

And it's legal to grow maryjane here, so who cares anymore

 

Just a couple of questions, what are on my mind.

Firstly what do you do with left over seed, sometimes there is so many seeds? Do you keep unsealed and unused seeds to the next year? Also do you use seeds that have gone out of date.

Secondly I mentioned lovely petunias earlier how commercial growers get one plant into one plug, someone on here replied commercial growers use pellets. I have a few packets, how can I put these into single plugs? Or would I be better just planting these in a tray then prick out? I have never successfully grown petunias from seed.

 

Depending on the seed I have left over, some seeds lose viability pretty quickly others last for a few years if kept dry and cool.
Not grown petunias for a while but I always prick out seedlings singly of bedding plants.
Petunias are pretty small at first so wait until they get a few leaves and sow very thinly.

 

Many years ago I grew some of the dust like seeds - petunia, begonia, and I think gesneriads. It was so hard to get them growing because the seedlings were so tiny. So for those sort of things now, I buy plug plants and let the supplier take the risk of germination. You can always take early cuttings to bulk up numbers.
For most things where I need more, I use a pot like @pete.

 

Believe it or not I used to prick out bedding lobelia seedlings singlly into trays.
I used to buy the mixed colour ones so each plant ended up just the one colour and grew into surprisingly bushy plants.