False Economy!
 

We have been using Miracle-Gro potting mix as a starter medium for years. It's full of little sticks, that have to be picked out one by one, and it's the most expensive mix in Wally World's parking lot - 12 bucks + for 2 cu.ft. We had two bags left over from last year, which covered our early planting - as usual, perfect plants.

When we ran out, one of our church ladies who works in the garden shop at Wal-Mart, insisted that we save money by buying "Expert Gardener" potting mix, which she said was the same thing as regular MG mix and only $8.46 for 2 cu.ft. I was reluctant, but went with it under pressure from my wife.

You guessed it! It wasn't sterile and everything we started with it is damping-off and there's a white fungus growing everywhere, even on the outside of The trays! We got the first planting of 1500 toms in the ground with Miracle-Gro, but now I have to really hustle - clean everything with Clorox and replant. False Economy! I can get usable transplants in 4 weeks if I'm lucky, in time for the 2nd and third plantings, but only with double labor and wasted money. Grrrrrr!! :cry:

Jack

I have used the Expert Mix before when transplanting up and never had any problems. As a matter of fact, the plants did really well.

I would never use MG or Expert potting mix for starting seeds though. I use a seed starting mix from Sun-Gro that I purchased at my local Piedmont Farm and Garden.

I also use a sterile seed starting mix. I will not use Miracle Grow for seed starting of tomatoes any longer because I had too much damping off and the mix was just too inconsistent in quality. I do use the cheaper mixes for starting squash, cucumbers, and etc. For potting up I use any good potting mix.

I use the largest of the Jiffy 7's to start mine and for what my application is, it works the best. All mine except for a few, go into earthboxes.

[quote=JackE;204779]We have been using Miracle-Gro potting mix as a starter medium for years. It's full of little sticks, that have to be picked out one by one, and it's the most expensive mix in Wally World's parking lot - 12 bucks + for 2 cu.ft. We had two bags left over from last year, which covered our early planting - as usual, perfect plants.

When we ran out, one of our church ladies who works in the garden shop at Wal-Mart, insisted that we save money by buying "Expert Gardener" potting mix, which she said was the same thing as regular MG mix and only $8.46 for 2 cu.ft. I was reluctant, but went with it under pressure from my wife.

You guessed it! It wasn't sterile and everything we started with it is damping-off and there's a white fungus growing everywhere, even on the outside of The trays! We got the first planting of 1500 toms in the ground with Miracle-Gro, but now I have to really hustle - clean everything with Clorox and replant. False Economy! I can get usable transplants in 4 weeks if I'm lucky, in time for the 2nd and third plantings, but only with double labor and wasted money. Grrrrrr!! :cry:

Jack[/quote]

Maybe try b54red's Clorox treatment on them? Could be less work.

"b54red's" ---What's that?

My wife doesn't agree, but it's been my experience that the most expensive product is nearly always the best. You get what you pay for. That Expert Gardener product probably has poor quality control - some batches are clean and others are infected.

Jack

I have started well over 600 tomato varieties using Expert brand potting soil....and will grow another 300+ this year.

If you use anything other than a sterile, soilless starting medium, (say that three times fast :P ) you are asking for trouble.

Wetting seed-starting mixes initially with around .3% hydrogen
peroxide (drugstore peroxide diluted 10 to 1 with water) helps
avoid damping off and other soil diseases that might be in
the seed-starting media, as does wetting them initially with
boiling water.

I bet a minute in a microwave before filling cells or plug tray
inserts would do a number on disease spores, too.

I've used Miracle Grow Potting Mix to start seeds with no problem. Getting the water regiment right is the tricky part for most mixes.

Hi there, Earl. Haven't heard from you for awhile. Did you mean to say 600 VARIETIES, Earl, or 600 plants? I cannot even keep 2 or 3 varieties separated without getting them mixed up. :-)

Jack

Dice -- I want to thank you for that info. Useful tip - and something I have right in the medicine cabinet. I've never had any trouble with the MG mix, but I'm going to adopt that practice in the future, starting now. Dumped all the infected stuff, sprayed every thing with bleach and replanted with MG. Set us back two weeks - we'll miss our 4/15 planting, but our 4/1 plants are okay. We plant every two weeks right through May - that staggers the harvest. In theory at least,, when one planting is done making we can flow "seamlessly" (I wish!) into the next one.

Jack

[quote=dustdevil;204982]I've used Miracle Grow Potting Mix to start seeds with no problem. Getting the water regiment right is the tricky part for most mixes.[/quote]

I have to resist the tendency to overwater, especially with the little peat pots. They dry out very quickly and do best if they're sitting in a tray with no drain holes, allowing a LITTLE BIT of water to stand in the bottom. Under ideal conditions, the plant gets just the right amount of water through osmosis. If too much water bulds-up in the tray, though, you're dead meat!

I used to use the APS (automatic propagation system) 40 cell seed starters -http://www.gardeners.com/APS/APS_Cat,default,sc.html, which also waters by osmosis, but automatically with no errors - perfect amount of moisture all the time!. This is the best system I found in 50 years of gardening - delivers just the right amount of moisture automatically with a water reservoir and a capillary mat. Always optimum moisture as long as there's water in the reservoir, and works with any kind of starter mix.

I still have 15 of those units from my home gardening days and would love to use them now - I miss them big time!. Problem is, they're just not applicable when you need to start plants by the thousands - and there's no efficient way to accelerate germination with bottom heat. The soil temp will always equal the ambient temp, which means using them inside the house, and that's not a viable situation for me anymore - too dirty! I have to work in a cool greenhouse now and use bottom heating mats.

But for many of y'all, with your heirlooms and many varieties, the APS system would be perfect - as long as you have a large light tray in a heated room. Buy one and try it - you'll love it! Five of them will fit on a 48" light tray shelf. You can drape plastic over the tray and the heat from the flourescent tubes will bring it up to 80 - tomatoes will germinate in a 72 degree room, but it takes longer (4 days at 85)

They used to be 5 bucks a unit - last ones I bought about five years ago were $15 each, but they last for years and years. I have some that are probably 20 years old and still good.

I have no financial interest in that company.

Jack

This might interest some folks here. I participate, to a limited extent, on a forum for REAL farmers - you know, guys who plant 1000 acres of tomatoes! They used to direct seed those processing tomatoes, but now, largely because of the cost of these new hybrid 'miracle" seeds, almost all tomatoes are transplanted. They tow huge machines behind with guys sitting on seats operating the transplant mechanism (and that's the extent of my knowledge).

But what's interesting is the fact that these transplants are all bare root - started hydroponically by specialized nurseries that serve these farmers, and transported/planted BARE Root! As a life-long seed-starter, this intrigues me. I don't want to embarrass myself, or show my ignorance, by asking how that is done on the professional forum -- but, I'm asking y'all how in the world they do that without killing the plants?

Jack

That is interesting stuff. Got to wonder about the logistics of gathering and transporting all of those stems.

I found this on the web but it is 23 years old. Interestingly, it mentions media block (tray-plants) plants as being superior to bare-root in terms of survival and in cost. Worst of all was seedlings.

I'm sure this might mean more to you being a grower than to me.

[URL]http://dspace.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/1896/hergertg1988-investigationoftransplantingmethodsforproctomat.pdf?sequence=1[/URL]

I learned a lot from that article, especially the part describing how the machine works - all the operators do is feed the transplants to a conveyor belt and the machine plants them at the correct spacing. I think there's been a lot of advancement since 1988 - fewer workers. In the article, a six-row machine takes 13 workers - the tractor driver and two on each row planter. Now they just have one operator on each row.

What I'm most interested in, though, is the nursery aspect of producing and handling the transplants.

Thanks for the info. Jack

[quote=JackE;204779]You guessed it! It wasn't sterile and everything we started with it is damping-off and there's a white fungus growing everywhere, even on the outside of The trays!

Jack[/quote]
Sounds like a slime mold. Out of curiosity, over what time period did the damping off occur? Were the plants affected all at once or in (spreading) patches? I had a mysterious situation this past summer with some seedlings (not tomatoes) and I never really pinned down a diagnosis, but a slime mold attack was as close as I could get from observing the symptoms.:(:?!?:

[quote=JackE;205429]I learned a lot from that article, especially the part describing how the machine works - all the operators do is feed the transplants to a conveyor belt and the machine plants them at the correct spacing. I think there's been a lot of advancement since 1988 - fewer workers. In the article, a six-row machine takes 13 workers - the tractor driver and two on each row planter. Now they just have one operator on each row.

What I'm most interested in, though, is the nursery aspect of producing and handling the transplants.

Thanks for the info. Jack[/quote]

Yes, I looked for that too but so far not found.

I would not have believed you could do that with a plant that is not woody like roses or trees.

Will keep an eye out and look.

Walter

Starting hundreds of plants in Peat Pots and using Miracle Gro purchased at a big box store? @@puzzled@@

On that scale of growing, I'd use MetroMix 902 as it's an excellent product and plastic trays are a lot more predictable and reusable.

Best of luck to you.

Just a quick note on something I discovered years ago.

I found that left over bags of both seed starter and potting soil perform much better than freshly purchased bags. I now keep a good supply of both in my garden shed. (they do have to be kept dry).

Also, when starting seeds, I find it does better to fill your trays a week or two before actually planting seeds and to keep them moist. I've been doing this for a few years now,combined with planting by the moon and have been more than pleased with the improved results.

I've also found it useful to screen your potting soil, no matter what brand your using. I've found everything from old peatpots, stones, chunks of wood and pinebark, and even shards of glass and large metal flakes in the most popular potting soils. Careful screening beats a trip to the emergency room for stitches. Been there!
Camo

I had read elsewhere that Evans Vegetable Farm supplied bareroot tomato seedling. A Google search brought this info on their FAQ page:

[URL]http://www.evansvegetableplants.com/questions.html[/URL]

Does it seem that they germinate their seedlings [I]in the field[/I] and pull them for shipment?

On the subject of seed starting mix, I brought home a bag of MG seed starting (not potting) mix that I believe was infested with gnat eggs. After a couple of weeks gnats were crawling all over the seed tray. Too many gnats too soon to be coincidence.

Could it be that the bags of mix sold from Home Depot, etc. are kept outside? They should be kept dry, as posted above. Now I get my seedling mix from a greenhouse supply store (Griffin's), where I'm pretty sure it is kept in a warehouse.

[QUOTE]Could it be that the bags of mix sold from Home Depot, etc. are kept outside? They should be kept dry, as posted above. Now I get my seedling mix from a greenhouse supply store (Griffin's), where I'm pretty sure it is kept in a warehouse.[/QUOTE]

No, distributors who sell to farmers keep it outside too. I picked some up last week and it was still frozen. No one I know keeps pallets of dirt in a warehouse.

Having said that, I've never heard of any farmer who starts tomato in peat pots and uses miracle grow on any kind of scale. That's a new one I haven't heard yet. It's time and money intensive, and lacks finer control you need to start and maintain a large amount of seedlings.

[QUOTE]Starting hundreds of plants in Peat Pots and using Miracle Gro purchased at a big box store? @@puzzled@@[/QUOTE]


I second that, I don't know why you wouldn't just get it from a distributor too, instead of a big box store - no matter who it is - just can't compete with the wholesale discount. No wonder it's a false economy anyway!

Usually they are started in flats, seed drills/plug trays.soil blocks etc etc - tons of methods for a larger scale than a home gardener does. Mixes, dirt, peat is bought in bales or cubic yards.

Even for a home gardener, it makes sense to just a buy a bale of starting mix etc. and keep it for next season or add the leftovers to the garden - much cheaper too. I would recommend that to anyone.

We don't start the plants in peat pots. We fill the pots with MG, stack them 50 to a tray and moisten them. Then we germinate the seed in a shallow container and, using tweezers, transplant the germinated seeds (before cotyledons are formed but with a long, delicate "tap" root -it has to have that root or it will die) into the small peat pots. It goes very fast - when the densely planted seeds sprout, I can fill a 50 pot tray in a matter of minutes. I loosen all the medium in the tray so they come-out real fast and easy and make an indentation in the peat pot to receive the thread-like root. I can transplant faster than a helper can fill peat pots - I'm waiting on another tray most the time! I think it's pretty efficient, labor-wise anyway

We'll use 12-15 large bags of MG for tomatoes every year. About $150 worth - and another $150 for a case of 4000 2x2 Jiffy pots. Our seed runs around $75 per M (1000) - a little less if we buy 5M. Pelleted seed won't hold-over to the next year, so we try to avoid it but sometimes have no choice.

*****************

NisiNJ - They say the plants are FIELD-GROWN (I thought it is was all hydroponic). Sounds like they just pull them up and ship them bare root on UPS! They say, "might be slightly wilted on arrival" - I would imagine so!! I guess these plants will take a lot rougher handling than we realize! Thanks for the link - just curiosity on my part.

Jack

I too believe in using hydrogen peroxide. I spray my starting mix, my seedlings, my raised beds where I plant my tomatoes and my plants several times during the season.

Ronny,

At what rate do you mix H2O2? Do you use the stuff from the pharmacy or something stronger?

[quote=creister;205592]Ronny,

At what rate do you mix H2O2? Do you use the stuff from the pharmacy or something stronger?[/quote]

I buy 35% food grade and mix it 1 part to 20 parts water as a soil drench or for diseased plants. For spraying seed starting mix and seedlings I mix it 1 part to 100 parts water which is same as mixing pharmacy grade 3.5% 1 bottle to 10 bottles of water.

Here is where I buy it.

[URL]http://www.dfwx.com/goewebsite.htm?gclid=CPe96tuP3KcCFaFk7AodywLN_g[/URL]

Here's a cheap way to start a lot of seeds -

Cut about 2" off the bottom of a gallon milk jug. Drill a lot of small holes in the bottom of it and fill it with your medium of choice. Sprinkle about a hundred seeds on top and cover them with a LITTLE bit of medium. Then put about 2" of water in the sink or a flat pan, and carefully place the seeded jug-bottom in the water. It will float and gradually sink as it becomes saturated. When the top is wet, place it on a heat mat set at 85 degrees and put a piece of Saran Wrap over it to hold the moisture. It won't need more water. Check it in four days.

But the 40 cell Prop-A-Matic I talked about earlier is the very best if you don't have to start large numbers and have a warm room and a light set-up of some kind.

Jack

[quote=NisiNJ;205470]On the subject of seed starting mix, I brought home a bag of MG seed starting (not potting) mix that I believe was infested with gnat eggs. After a couple of weeks gnats were crawling all over the seed tray. Too many gnats too soon to be coincidence.[/quote]
I have wondered the same thing. I have less this year than in the past, so far I have only been using Fafard 3B mix. (see below) My worst infestation happened when I used aged compost.

[quote=camochef]I found that left over bags of both seed starter and potting soil perform much better than freshly purchased bags. I now keep a good supply of both in my garden shed. (they do have to be kept dry).[/quote]I keep mine in the garage. It usually has the proper moisture content in the bag. I wonder how long bugs can live in there.

JackE, take a look at what these people have to offer. I like the 3B mix. They also make a specific seed germinating mix. I see what you mean about being in a small town, everything is 100 miles away! Sometimes it's just easier to stick with what you are familiar with.
[URL]http://www.fafard.com/index.php?p=7&zip=&city=woodville+&state=tx&submit=Find[/URL] (retailers)
[URL]http://www.fafard.com/index.php?p=110[/URL] (products) sometimes nurseries carry these
[URL]http://www.fafard.com/?p=2[/URL] (homepage)
[URL]http://www.fafard.com/?p=204[/URL] Not sure of your territory, but give them a try- they should be able to lead you in the right direction. My rep was very helpful when I worked at the greenhouse.

Of note, my mystery mold happened on plants growing homemade mix.:|:bummer:

I have had a dozen tomato plants that were some left over from people planting a field. They did not have a transplanter and my boys worked for them setting a field of them. They are heavy stemed and trimed. But I have not seen it done. Waters them at the same time. I know are bare root. They grew and they cannery furnished the plants. Use to be fields of tomates here and then cannery quit. Gteenhouse sold good tomato plants and peppers and stuff and 5 cents each back in the 60's and he just pulled them from the growing crates and wrap newspaper around. Grew fine. When he passed on and no green house here.

I have had the Walmart Expert potting soil and it was fine. But the last I got same stuff suppose to be and it was full of rocks the size end of thumb. Was not fit to use.

I plant in anything that will hold the soil. Pans and cut them out. Being just me set plants I worked out my system to cut down on the work as much as I could and fast as I could. I had to change how I did after first year as too dry here. I have to put in ditches and irrigate, Always have had to irrigate here. You till and then re-ditch. I do not have fancy setup but gated pipe .

Boiling water works I tried it years back when only few plants but trying for few thousand plants I decided not worth the effort. Time it takes. I bought MG this year as that is what the farm store had and I did not get to city to get anything else. I hate peat pots as they dry out.

JackE do you set all those plants in field or just sell plants?

Howdy, from Texas to Colorado --

We plant them all in the field. We have never sold any plants, but we are considering that in the future.

I like the peat pots. They won't dry-out if we set them in a little bit of water in a tray with no holes. Also, when we plant them we always bury them deep enough to cover the top edge of the pot. If not, it will dry out in the ground from "osmosis" - or is it "capillary action." Whatever. :-) They have drawbacks, but they're handy for us and we're used to them.

Jack

Jack