Trays v. cells

Having grown most of my seedlings in cells for many years I am coming to the conclusion that trays are far better, for reasons see below. There's nothing more neat and satisfying than a tray of freshly pricked out cells but I don't feel the final results are very good. Here are my arguments, see if you can contradict them or verify them! Many of them are opposites, of course.

Pros for trays
1.You are less likely to get rootbound seedlings so they establish better when transplanted.
2.The total volume of soil/water/food available to a seedling is much larger so they are much less likely to wilt or starve.
3. Ergo, they are less demanding to care for and forgiving of a forgetful gardener.
4. Small amounts of root damage on planting out is easily compensated for as an open rootball quickly regrows.

Cons for trays
1 They use more compost.
2.They are slightly less convenient if you partially empty them.
3. There is a less convenient range of sizes
4 There may be rootball damage on planting out.

Pros for Cells
1.There should be no rootball damage or loss on planting out for fragile seedlings
2. It is easy to partially use or distribute the contents of a cell tray without disturbing the other seedlings
3.Economical on compost

Cons for Cells
1.They are small and shallow giving each plant very finite resources of food and water.
2.They get potbound very easily.
3. They need very careful management to avoid the seedlings getting hungry, thirsty and rootbound, less good for lazy or busy gardeners.
4.The plants may fail to bush out or run to sparse flowers rapidly as a response to stress and a poor rootball.


What d'yall think and do?

 

In fact, I think the main beneficiaries of cell use is the garden industry - use less compost and sell them on quick so you don't have to care for them for long, doesn't matter if they fail once the customer has bought them!

 

It's trays for me Madahhlia done the cell bit but as you say...dry out quicker and need much more attention...besides the majority of seeds i sow are small and would be a faff to sow them indivdually ...yes more compost get used but that outweighs the overall succsess rate for me at least....plus IMO it's easier to water trays....some cells do get missed....

 

It's got to be cell gardening for me .... Less damage when potting up makes a stronger plant

 

Depends on the seeds, tiny seeds definitely trays, bigger seeds in cells although I agree that these do dry out surprisingly quickly!!

Val

 

I'm meaning that the plants go into cells or trays at the pricking out stage, really. I only need small numbers of seedlings so always sow the actual seeds in 9cm pots and move them on.

 

Ah, I was thinking seeds although you did say seedlings, at the pricking out stage I put mine into 2 1/2 inch pots.

Val

 

Ahhh get you....to me it all depends on the seed

 

This was our 1st year for sowing flower seeds and we used cells.1st problem was running out of room for each cell. Got even worse when we had to put them in 9cm pots, where do we put them all.
For next year I am going to use Stewart deep gravel trays from Wilkinson’s 50cm (20" x 40cm (15 3/4") x 8cm (3 1/4" ish) £3.25p .Not sure if to first put seeds into seed tray then transfer them to large gravel tray or put seeds directly into large gravel tray but section it off for different flower seeds. Any way I thought I could get more transplanted plants into a large gravel tray than individual 7-9 cm pots.
Of course I would have to drill holes in bottom for drainage. I already have about 6 large gravel trays with no holes and 3 with holes. If I need to bring them say into conservatory I can use undrilled tray under the one with holes in to save water dripping everywhere.

Anyway that is the idea and hopefully will save on space as we plan to plant even more flower seeds next year so we a good variety.

 

I use a mixture of trays and 6 cell trays depending on seed size to start with. Smaller seedlings are then moved into six cell trays and larger ones into 3 inch pots.

 

Like Sheal I sow in trays then prick out to cells - then on to larger pots as necessary.

S

 

Same as sheal sow in trays/Chinese containers then prick out into cells..
This year tried 2 sizes, 24 cells and 6 cells.
The 6 cell ones seem to be doing alot better in the garden.
Next year that's all I'm using

 

I think you get just as much root disturbance planting out from cells (as tearing plants apart when planting out from trays). By the time you have pinched and pushed and crumpled from the bottom upwards the rootball is nothing like the shape it started off as. If the plant has rooted through the single minuscule drainage hole there will be further root damage.

I have pricked out to 3" pots in the past, last year I decided to move up to 9cm (3.5"-ish) to give me bigger plants and a bit more leeway on planting out timing. I lost quite a few - probably as the soil volume,a nd thus water retention, was too great for small seedlings.

This year I pricked out to 1" cells and then transplanted to 9cm pots. Much more successful but getting the seedlings out of the cells for potting on was a nightmare. Push and crumple out of the cells (I hate the waste of the destruction of the cells), and things that have only partially rooted all fall to bits and get significant disturbance.

I meant to do an experiment, but didn't have time / opportunity. My thought was to cut up some 1" dia. pipe into, say, 1" lengths and use that instead of cells. I would place them on capillary matting for irrigation. potting on would just require pushing the whole core out, which would be easy as the pipe is rigid. I could even move them a bit further apart if they grew "wide" and started to interfere with their neighbours.

I think this would solve another problem I perceive with cell trays - how do you label them when you have 5-of-this and 7-of-that? I start off in rows. Then leave one blank to indicate "nothing here" (I dig the compost out ... otherwise the blank cell would look the same as one that died!). If the tray gets turned round I might get confused and think the label at the start of a "group" is actually at the end of the adjacent group :( So I have to choose different leaf pattern plants, that will be recognisable to me, as adjacent companions. But when I am pricking out it often doesn't work out like that - I have a seed tray with 3 varieties of Delphiniums in it - they all look identical of course. So I start off 3 separate cell trays, put each of the delphiniums in each cell tray, and then look around for something else to prick out into the unused areas of the cell trays ...

I think little pipe-pots would allow me to prick out the first batch of delphiums and put the pipe-pots in, say, a seed tray. I can start off three seed trays to keep them apart. It will be easy to add more pipe-pots later - tomorrow or even next week. I don't have to worry about the compost getting overwatered - which is a problem with cell trays that have compost-filled but plant-empty cells waiting for the next batch. When it comes to potting on some will be ready before others - some varieties will be ready sooner, but within a batch some may be slower than other. With pipe-pots I will be able to just reorganise them for optimal space, whereas with cell-trays I have been left with half potted-on cell trays all over the place ...

But I may be over-thinking the problem - what do you think? OCD-is-me

 

I sow into small pots (4cm) in placcy bags. As soon as the seedling is upright and the embryonic leaves are open I prick out and place in 25mm cells that I get for free from a local nursery. They have a large enough hole in the bottom to poke your finger through which makes it easier to transplant. The downside to this hole is it needs to be plugged (either with a square cut out of newspaper or with sphag moss) to keep the compost in, which is a bit of a pain as they are 84 cells each. I then pot on to 9cm pots.