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Growing Techniques: Thinning Vegetable Seedlings

Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by Tracey in How to Grow Veg

Thinning seedlings is an essential technique all vegetables growers need to learn. Thinning is literally pulling out seedlings that are very close together to space out your seedlings and avoid overcrowding.

Reasons to Thin your Seedlings:-

• Give your vegetable plants room to grow,
• To enable you to get bigger vegetables by spacing seedlings correctly,
• To help keep away pests and diseases as they breed or spread in confined spaces.

How To Thin Your Vegetable Seedlings

1. Find seedlings that are very close together and are large enough to handle,
2. Choose seedlings to thin that have eaten leaves, marks on the leaves, weak seedlings, thin or small seedlings so that only the strongest are left to survive.
3. Place your finger on the soil to firm it against the seedling staying in the ground whilst pulling the other seedling out with your other hand.
4. Go along the row of seedlings pulling out seedlings which are in close proximately to each other.
5. Leave in any seedlings that are growing strong, these can always be moved (depending on vegetable type) or thinned at a later stage.
6. If you don’t want to thin lots of seedlings at one time, thin a few to make a few gaps and then a few months later thin again.
7. Remove all thinnings from the plot, some thinnings like lettuce, spinach, endive, pak choi can be eaten otherwise add to the compost bin.
8. Water well after thinning to encourage new growth and help disturbed soil settle around the seedlings.

Notes on Thinning Carrots
Thinning carrots gives off a scent into the air which attracts carrot root fly. Therefore it is better to thin carrots late in the evening and water well afterwards. Thinning carrots is essential to prevent carrots becoming odd-shaped or misformed.

Thinning seedlings is quite often a fiddly process and if you would like to avoid thinning there are a few products on the market which try to help like the Pro-Seeder. The seeds can be put into the chamber and an appropriate size nozzle added to squeeze out the seeds one by one in your plot. Magic Seeder is another smaller seed sower especially designed for seed trays, cells or pots.

Other Posts you may find interesting:

• Don’t Delay, Sow Today! Winter Vegetable seedlings emerge in just 1 week.
• 10 Reasons to Start Growing Organic Vegetables in your Garden.
• How To Grow Veg Guides.
• Vegetable Photo Slideshows.