Plant starting

[John Cubit]

Trying to get an idea on what everyone does for adding plants to new systems or existing beds.  Do you plant cutting from your finest soil crop, seeds broadcasted over your media, pots, compost pots, transplants?  Do you follow the seed recommendations?

What problems have you experienced?  What has been your most successful method?  Any tips and tricks that you do to prep your seeds?

[Sheri Schmeckpeper]

All of the above. For us, plants like cucumbers and tomatoes do very well when started indoors under grow lights, then transplanted into the medium. Leafy things like lettuce and radish do well scattered and worked into the media. Little peat pots work well in the raft system. They keep the seeds from getting lost. I haven't done many cuttings, though.

[Growzay]

I like to use starter plugs made of composted bark- rapid rooters. Also, when just broadcasting planting seeds into the media, I find that it's better to selectively spread more seed especially if you're using rocks, not all of them germinate and/or some get eaten in the seedling stage. I've taken cuttings and planted them directly into the rocks and they've rooted without a problem after a couple of weeks with no root stimulator added. It doesn't hurt to manually wet the seeds for the 1st couple of days to ensure even germination. Just try to plant the right plant varieties at the right seasons/time of year.

[TCLynx]

I use peat pellets alot mainly for seeds destined for the rafts and towers but the extras get planted into the media beds too sometimes.  I also sprinkle seeds over the media beds and have made my own seedling blocks using soil blockers before.  I try to minimize the amount of compost that goes into or stays in my media beds through since it could contribute to clogging or overloading the bio-filtration if not kept to a reasonable amount.