29-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Otago Daily Times
Seedlings the old-fashioned way
PHOTO: KATE MOSS-MASON
As a child I remember going to the local hardware store with my dad and digging out vegetable and flower seedlings from a wooden box and wrapping them in newspaper.
Most seedings you buy from the garden centre have been grown as plugs or direct sown into containers in an automated system. An old but tried and true way of growing on seedlings is "pricking out", transferring the seedling from seed pot into a wooden tray. The automated systems miss this step out, saving time and materials.
At the botanic garden we still grow a small number of annuals for the bedding display in the Knot Garden, about 2000 plants for each of the summer and winter displays. We stick to the old-fashioned method of pricking the seedlings out into wooden trays as we don't grow enough of the same type of plants to warrant an automated system. The upside of this is our apprentices get to learn the skill of timing a crop, pricking it out and growing on and then planting out the result.
It's a rare chance to follow something from start to finish.
The bedding seeds are sown in February and September for planting out in April and November. Once seeds have germinated and reached a stage at which they can be handled, they are ready for the next stage, "pricking out".
Seedlings of annual plants can usually be pricked out as soon as they have two true leaves.
The Friends of the Botanic Garden grow a few annual plants for the plant trolley in the information centre shop.
This autumn, they have pansies available to be dug directly out of the wooden tray and wrapped in newspaper — for sale for five plants for a $1.
It's a nice old-fashioned touch with no plastic pot involved.
Garden Life is produced by Dunedin Botanic Garden. For more details contact propagation officer Alice Lloyd-Fitt.
