I've got onions! If you guys watched my seed starting kit comparison video
you'll recall that back at the end of January I started onion seeds in four
different kits from four different companies. So I had a kit from,
I had a kit from Burpee, from Parks, from Gurney's, and a Jiffy kit from
my local Menards. It's the third week in March now and I've moved the onions from
indoors in my seed starting rack out here in the greenhouse and I wanted to
give an update on how the seedlings are looking-- so let's take a look! An update
on the seed starting kits. This is day 11 after sowing and the onion seedlings are
up and about an inch and a half to two inches tall. This is the Jiffy seed
starting kit. It's kind of hard to tell because these onion seedlings are so
thin, but this kit had the worst germination rate of all the kits. It was
like between half and two-thirds of the seedlings came up in this one. The
Gurney's seed starting kit had a pretty good germination rate about 85%. The
Park's kit was similar about an 85 percent germination rate. And the Burpee
kit was a little better germination than the Jiffy kit a little worse than the
Park's and Gurney's. So this is the kit from Park's, and I have to say that for
onion seeds specifically I'm really liking this small plug size. I've grown
other seedlings- tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage and for those I like
the bigger cell sizes better, but for onions I'm really liking this. And we had
a pretty good germination rate, the seedlings look good, so I'm happy with
this kit. This is the kit from Burpee, and if you recall I had quite a time with
this one in the beginning. I will say that I've been pleasantly surprised in
terms of the seedlings that have germinated and grown they're doing just
as well as the seedlings in the other kits, but you
can see I had a lot of cells where for whatever reason the seeds did not
germinate I got no growth. I suspect that part of that is because of the uneven
moisture wicking. So the wicking system- if you can see this mat on the bottom
here is supposed to wick up moisture to the seedlings- and just a few days into
the experiment I was finding that I had to top water everything to keep these
plants evenly moist. So overall for the trouble of putting this thing together
and then the trouble of having to topwater everything I'm not real happy
with this seed starting kit. Here we have the kit from Gurney, so as I mentioned
this bigger plug cell size I favor this for my other larger crops- so it's great
for tomatoes, I've got some broccoli growing in them right now broccoli and
cabbage and cauliflower, they do really well. The plants, again the onion plants that
are growing here are doing just fine but, I just find that the smaller cell size
is really nice for the tiny little onion seedlings. But overall this kit was
really easy to use I'm happy with it. And then finally I've got my kit from
Menards (Jiffy) and again the onions that are growing or doing okay but I had a pretty
poor germination rate. So you can see here I've got a lot of cells where I had
nothing come up. So this is a cost-effective option and you can see
it's not performing terribly so overall not not too bad.
I'll give one final update when I'm ready to transplant
these seedlings into the garden so be sure to check back to see how they're doing.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!