Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - Effective germination of tomatoes, peppers and eggplant

Salsacharley · June 6, 2013

Quote: "Once again this year I am getting great germination, healthy seedlings and no damping off at all - and probably have 6000 or so babies growing. I am going to try to point out what I think are the specific success factors."

6000? Yowzers! How many transplants do you make and how long does it take?

This is my 2nd year of serious effort in growing more tomatoes. I sowed 180 Jiffy plugs with 2 or 3 seeds each of 95 varieties, and I got an insane germination percent just in the Jiffy planter trays. It must have been about 98%. I ended up with 260 viable plants after transplanting, and after my embarrassing damp off attack. My big mistake was in transplanting where I separated the seedlings from 2 or 3 per plug into their own 4" pots. I used a Mel's Mix formula in the pots that included steer manure to which I attribute my damp off problem.

The plants did well for the first couple of weeks but then started damping off.
I salvaged many of them by cutting the plants off right above the damp off and re-potting them deep in clean potting mix. This did retard their growth compared to the other plants, but they are doing well now that they are in the ground.

I wish I would have found this thread about 5 months ago.

Thanks for the great info.

June 6, 2013	#57
Salsacharley Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2013 Location: New Mexico Posts: 2,052	Quote: "Once again this year I am getting great germination, healthy seedlings and no damping off at all - and probably have 6000 or so babies growing. I am going to try to point out what I think are the specific success factors." 6000? Yowzers! How many transplants do you make and how long does it take? This is my 2nd year of serious effort in growing more tomatoes. I sowed 180 Jiffy plugs with 2 or 3 seeds each of 95 varieties, and I got an insane germination percent just in the Jiffy planter trays. It must have been about 98%. I ended up with 260 viable plants after transplanting, and after my embarrassing damp off attack. My big mistake was in transplanting where I separated the seedlings from 2 or 3 per plug into their own 4" pots. I used a Mel's Mix formula in the pots that included steer manure to which I attribute my damp off problem. The plants did well for the first couple of weeks but then started damping off. I salvaged many of them by cutting the plants off right above the damp off and re-potting them deep in clean potting mix. This did retard their growth compared to the other plants, but they are doing well now that they are in the ground. I wish I would have found this thread about 5 months ago. Thanks for the great info.