← The vegetable garden H10-02 · Module 2 of 7 · Pages: 21 · Worksheets: 5

Raising seedlings: from seed to transplant

How to raise healthy, sturdy tomato, pepper, cabbage and other transplants on a windowsill or under a lamp, from sowing to planting out

€9Buy this guide

Secure checkout with Stripe · VAT included · The PDFs are in the language of this page.

Whole series: The vegetable garden, €39

Raising seedlings: from seed to transplant

In short

  • Count sowing dates back from the last frost: peppers 10, tomatoes 8, cabbage 6, cucumbers 2 weeks earlier (3–4 weeks in a pot).
  • Light matters more than warmth. Without a south-facing window or a lamp, seedlings stretch and flop.
  • Germinate warm (20–28 °C / 68–82 °F), then grow on cooler (15–18 °C at night) for sturdy plants.
  • Water from below and less often: more seedlings die from too much water than from anything else.
  • Before planting out, 7–10 days of hardening off, step by step.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. What to raise as transplants and what to sow direct
  2. When to sow: counting back
  3. Compost and containers
  4. Sowing step by step
  5. Light and temperature
  6. Pricking out and potting on
  7. Watering, feeding and seedling health
  8. Hardening off
  9. A good transplant and planting out
  10. Hotbeds and cold frames
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Seedling calendar
  • Seed and space calculator
  • Seedling log
  • Hardening-off schedule
  • Germination test

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

This guide in other languages:

BalkanDeutschEspañolFrançaisPortuguêsTürkçeالعربية