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Pricking Out: Mastering Seedling Transplantation · Hydroponics Daily

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  Welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today we're going to be talking about pricking
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  out, which is what you do when you want to transplant seedlings out of a seed
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  tray into their own pots.
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  There are a number of mistakes people often make when it comes to pricking out.
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  The first is that they hold them by the young stem, what we scientifically call
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  the hypocotyl, when you should actually be holding them by the seed leaf,
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  which is what we term the cotyledon.
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  So hold them by the cotyledon the seed leaves not the young stem
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  and that's because the cotyledons are
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  designed to be dispensable they're designed to to
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  wither away after a few weeks you might think oh i'm damaging the
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  photosynthetic apparatus of the plant but you're not the.
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  True leaves will emerge from the meristem here the
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  apical bud but if you and if you damage these
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  it's of no consequence really to the plants hold them by
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  them if you to hold them by the the hypercottle the
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  young developing stem then you can damage that plant permanently
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  for its entire lifespan and that's
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  important if you're growing something like a bristlecone pine you could have damaged that.
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  Plant for 7 000 years for example you
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  know the potential of that tree its lifespan is you
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  know is a is millennia and then
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  if you're growing something where the stem is important then obviously that's
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  a big issue the other thing to consider is
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  is it a fibrous root system or has
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  it got a taproot system it seems like carrots you shouldn't really
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  be pricking these out anyway you should probably be sowing these
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  in situ where they're going to grow to
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  a harvest or crop if you grow taproot type
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  plants in a seed tray you'll get damage to
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  the the root meristem and to the
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  taproot and then you'll get forked produce and
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  that's obviously not wanted when it comes to carrots
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  they are you know low value carrots are
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  the forked ones you probably won't even get them for sale in supermarkets so
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  is it a fibrous root system and then there's a question of are
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  you pricking out too late when the the root systems are all intertwined or too
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  early when the plant's too delicate so it's a bit of an art form that choosing
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  the right time to prick out also you don't want them to get too dense the canopy
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  because you'll get very humid conditions which could lead disease.
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  So pricking out, always lift by the cotyledons, not by the young stems.
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  Any other comments on pricking out? Let me know.