Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all where is the best place to buy seedlings in Perth? Preferably not a hardware store and close to Beeliar. Thanks

I'd say check your yellowpages.

But starting seeds in media beds is so incredibly easy. Just sprinkle them over the top of the bed. They seem to fall to the right part of the bed (larger like pumpkin you might need to push a little deeper, and germinate up easily. It takes a little longer in colder weather, but usually always pops up.

Plus you can get so many better varieties of seeds online. Most garden stores I've seen have only generic boring seedlings, and not much else.

+1 for seeds.

Also, call me crazy but I reckon that seedlings which are transplanted grow slower than plants directly sown from seed? Last year I threw in some seed corn I had left over from a previous year, at the same time as I planted out some purchased seedlings (thinking the seedlings would be the first harvest and the seeds would give me a subsequent harvest) Imagine my surprise when the seeded corn fruited well before the purchased seedlings! (Yeah, I know, it probably was a varietal thing? But, maybe it wasn't?)

For some reason I have trouble starting brassicas from seed in the AP, but everything else seems to work ok.

Yeah I guess in my mind I figured seedlings would be faster. At least if I plant seeds I wont have to wash the dirt of the roots ever again.

We spoke about a good special on an online shop on this thread viewtopic.php?t=22668

I've grown vegies for 40 years, on and off, and one of the things that I learned early in the piece and have never had cause to deviate from is that some seedlings should never be transplanted but rather should be sown where they are to grow. Carrots and corn are the first species that spring to mind in this category. Others are parsnips, peas and beans.

Bunson, I'm not surprised at all that your transplanted corn seedlings were quickly outpaced by those that did not suffer a replant. Just because seedling merchants see fit to supply corn and carrot seedlings in trays for transplanting doesn't mean that they are ever going to perform well, just as summer vegies offered as seedlings in the middle of winter, and vice versa, are almost inevitably doomed.

I despair at the skullduggery of seedling merchants in this regard.

Hey PLJ do you plant cuttings from tomatoes and basil etc?

I have seen some Hydro guys and dirt gardeners saying planting the suckers from the tommies gives better and quicker yields?

The tomato suckers will grow a plant quicker than the seeds. Tomatoes are pretty cool plants. I've got nothing against tommy seedlings, just against the bad varieties they stock and sell.

Plus there is supposed to be some disease issues to deal with. It's never been a problem with me though.

Like PLJ said, some plants recover better than others with transplanting. And some seedlings like corn/peas/pumpkin are only a week out of the ground, so you're spending 30x the amount for the seedlings.

Yes Colum seedlings are not good value, Most of my best growth has been from seeds sown directly into the GB.

I planted some tomato suckers on Saturday, just dipped them into rooting powder and stuck them into the GB, seem to be doing ok so far, I thought they were going to get blown away with the storm we had yesterday.

I often grow tomatoes from cuttings, Slowboat (they aren't suckers; suckers are different), especially if I get a really good one. I have a few currently growing in my AP system but I find more of them rot than strike in this cool weather. Actually, I think I only ever tried tomato cuttings once or twice before AP. It was on this forum that I heard Charlie talk of his good results with them and so I gave them another go.

CB-B is right - cutting grown tomatoes plants hit the ground running compared to their seed grown siblings.

The beauty of growing plants from cuttings or divisions is that they will be clones of the parent plant and have 100% the same characteristics. Sexually propagated plants on the other hand, ie ones grown from seed, can be somewhat of a 'lucky dip' due to the genetic diversity available through having two parents. This may or may not be an issue, depending on the species concerned.

what is the difference between growing from a cutting or a sucker and which is best

The suckers are the off branch that forms in between the main runner and the leaves/fruit. They make good cuttings, but they aren't suckers once in the ground (or media in our case), they are then cuttings. The cutting can be taken from any part of the plant (well not just the leaves, but the main stem).

Unless I'm wrong on that part?

I've had 100% strike rate with planting the suckers, no rotting ones yet. Never tried it in the cooler weather though, it slows everything down. Never saw the need to try the cutting hormones, I figured it'd wash away quickly in the AP water.

Slowboat, a cutting is a piece of plant material (leaf, stem, branch or even root) that is removed from a plant for the purpose of reproducing that plant vegetatively. A sucker, on the other hand, is a basal shoot that typically grows straight up from the root of a plant. These are often undesirable because they divert the plant's growing energy away from the main growth of the plant.

What Colum B-B is being referring to as a tomato 'sucker' is actually just a particular type of cutting; one taken from the lateral or side shoot of the plant. These are the shoots that are often removed when encouraging a tomato to grow tall and to produce fewer, large fruit trusses rather than lots of small fruit.

yep thanks PLJ, sort of wondering why I grew seedlings in trays when I could have just snapped off some suckers and stuck them in the GB?

Me three!... but only in one system.

If I try Brassicas in the IBC system in my shop, they germinate, but then damp off before they get to about 30-40mm tall. I've tried a variety of Asian greens, a couple of varieties of Kale, and Broccoli... all without success. I've even tried well developed punnet seedlings, they rot within a week or two. However, in the kid's system at home they will grow fine.

I read up on this once and found an article, written by the WA Ag Dept from memory, about a similar issue among commercial hydroponic growers of Bok-choy I think. it was a while back, and again I'm only going on memory, but I think it was a bacterial issue, a species/variety specific to Brassicas... and virtually impossible to get rid of once in a system.