Photography via Grown & Gathered Matt and Lentil Purbrick run Grown & Gathered from their farm in Tabilk, just far enough from inner-city Melbourne. Grown & Gathered is a website rich with advice on small-scale, sustainable farming, and somehow feels like an open book into their own personal experience with cultivating and living off what they themselves produce. Their focus is on sharing produce and knowledge toward creating a genuine community of people who care. It’s an authentically rich way to live, and no wonder things are positively blooming.
Matt and Lentil have put together a step-by-step guide to planting your very own seedlings, with a little help from Homecamp’s new gardening range. They’re dab hands at making this whole gardening thing easy (you should see the beautiful Grown & Gathered illustrated seasonal charts) so follow along below and get your hands dirty.
When it comes to planting out seedlings care needs to be taken to not damage the delicate roots that have grown. Always plant with your hands, always plant in moist soil and always water your newly planted seedlings.
How to plant new veggie seedlings
- Clear the space in your garden where you will plant.
- Using a hand or garden fork, loosen an area of soil 20 cm by 20 cm by 20 cm.
- If your soil is dry, water it now so that it is moist. Also water the tray of seedlings you are working with to help protect the seedlings roots that are about to be exposed to the air.
- Put down your tools and carefully remove your seedling from the tray by grasping a small handful of soil around its roots. You want to disturb the roots as little as possible and take as much of the root system as you can with the seedling. Use soft hands. Be gentle. Do not squeeze the handful of soil as this will compress and damage the roots.
You want to disturb the roots as little as possible and take as much of the root system as you can with the seedling. Use soft hands. Be gentle.
'Watering in' ensures that all the disturbed soil settles completely around the seedlings delicate roots.
5. Using your free hand, pull back a handful of soil about 15 cm deep from your spot of loosened earth, and then you gently place the seedling in place. Then let the soil fall gently back in place all around the stem of the seedling. The root ball of the seedling should now be at least 10cm below the surface of the soil with soil piled up around the base of its stem.
6. Support the stem of the seedling with the soil around it by layering your thumbs on top of each other, touching the tips of your pointer fingers around the stem and gently but firmly pressing down. You want to create a shallow well around the newly planted seedling. This will help capture water when it is irrigated or it rains.
7. Gently but deeply water your newly planted seedling immediately with a watering can or similar hose nozzle. ‘Watering in’ ensures that all the disturbed soil settles completely around the seedlings delicate roots. Roots die immediately if they dry out and good moist soil-root contact prevents this from happening. If you don’t have the right hose nozzle, spray the water onto the back of a garden tool like a shovel – this will create a finer spray that you can direct onto new seedlings.
8. Tend to your newly planted seedling every day, keeping the soil around it moist but not wet. After some days you will know it has established new roots when its leaves deepen in colour. It is now feeding off your soil!
9. Mulch around your seedlings with straw only after they are established and at least 20 cm above the soil to avoid suffocating them. Happy growing.
Images and guide by Matt and Lentil of Grown & Gathered
