Advice on growing plants from seed?
Question:My nephew has germinated some seeds in tissue paper and they have all cracked and sprouted white little tails - now do we put these into the dirt pointing down (are they roots?) or pointing up (are they the beginning of stems?). Last time we tried this we got it wrong and everything died! Please help, we are so not green fingered!
Answers:
keep it on damp cotton wool for a few more weeks, give it plenty of light, but keep it moist, once there is a stem and small roots, them you can put it in soil.
It shouldn't matter, these are the shoots of the plants and will head for the surface whichever way up you put them. But as they are shoots, point them upwards to give them a good start. Put them in seed trays with fine compost and keep them watered, dont let the compost dry out. When they have grown big enough to handle, repot them in individual pots.
Plant the seed part down and the plant part up. It's the plant part that you see.
You can plant it in dirt. Fill the pots about 3/4 full of potting soil put in your seeds cover them lightly keep the soil damp not wet and cover with plastic wrap (makes a greenhouse effect) and put in a sunny window. The seed believe it or not will grow towards the light and in a few days will have sprouted above the "surface". If your putting them directly into the ground make sure you prep the soil meaning make it loose enough and dont put it to far down into the dirt only a small amount of dirt should cover the seed keep it moist at all times even if that means watering 4-6 times a day.
I would typically put the tails down into the soil, though it depends on what you are planting. I noticed that when I started my plants in soil (basil, thyme, oregano), if I packed the soil too loosely, the seed coating would be stuck over the top of the plant, and that's how it would come out of the soil.
You and your nephew may want to try the following alternative, especially since it's inexpensive. Take an empty milk container and cut it in half (rinse it out first, of course). Line the bottom with damp soil and place the seeds at the depth indicated on the seed packet.
Put some small ventilation holes or slits in the top part of the container and put it over the bottom. This will act as a greenhouse. Then, when the seeds sprout, you will have plants that are already sprouting in the soil, and you can simply transfer the clumps of soil with the seedlings to pots or outdoors.
They also sell little greenhouses at home improvement stores. They're maybe 18" by 24" and made entirely of plastic. The ones I saw came packaged with small pellets. You moisten them and place the seeds on top. Some of these greenhouses can be plugged in and heated, while others just retain the heat from the sun.
Have fun!
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