Will they prick out?

I've sown 2 seeds per station(pot) with my melons and squashes, all have germinated so do I prick out and divide or discard the weakest (not that any are weak) ?

Sorry for the ignorance BUT it is my first time growing squashes from seed.

 

Don`t dump them Vince, prick them into pots, it doesn`t hurt to have spares.:gnthb:

 

I can't tell you how many times I have read "discard the weakest" in gardening books, and in all my life I reckon I can count the number of times that one-was-weaker-than-the-other on the fingers of one hand, so don't feel bad!

Melon and Squash seeds are pretty precious - seeds packets contain 10 or less, typically. So I wouldn't be rushing to just "discard any". Lettuce, with packets containing 1,000 seeds or so, are a different matter ... some of my Melon varieties only had 5 seeds per packet :O

So I'm with Dai on putting the "spares" into pots.

However, you don't want to wind up with more than you have space for ... you can sell / give them away, but I just find that too much hassle <yawn!>, I'm sure that's very non-PC of me! If the Friends & Family have not specifically asked me to grow plants for them they can WHISTLE! but BY GOD I will expect them to eat up ALL my surplus Cougettes this Summer ...

 

If you dont intend on discarding the weakest, why plant two seeds to a pot.

 

"If you dont intend on discarding the weakest, why plant two seeds to a pot"

Is one extra seed cheaper than a pot full of (potentially wasted) compost perhaps?

I want X plants for my crop plan (sorry, all very Nerdy and that!!) so would want to grow X pots, and ensure that all had a viable plant. But in practice I sow my seed separately and prick out / pot on. So I only sow about 120% of the seed for the number of plants that I want.

 

I had a slight "Oops" doing that for my Courgettes

http://kgarden.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/courgettes-in-propagator-oops/

 

"seperating them when they are small is tricky sometimes"

I've got wicket keepers hands, so if I can do it I'm sure you can!

I have a trust pencil, called "Dibber" of course , reserved for pricking out. Does double duty of writing on labels too ...

Blunt end into the seed tray, work under the plants and generally lift them up a bit - at this point they are in clumps, each attached to a "clod" of compost.

I *only* use John Innes Seed compost, I can't get on with this job using peat-style composts, and I find that it breaks up so easily (it behaves almost like sand, IYSWIM) whereas that never happened, for me, with the peat-style seed composts.

So now I have a clod with X seedlings in it. Now I use the pointy end of Dibber-pencil to break it up. It comes apart very easily with a bit of prodding, poking, and nudging.

Then grab a seed leaf / cotyledon between thumb & forefinger and drop teh seedling into a hole I prepared earlier (using Dibber ) and bury it up to its neck.

And Bobs-your-Uncle (and Robert will probably be along with a video any minute now !!)