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Transplanting

Many gardeners, especially those who live in colder climates, will start seeds indoors prior to transplanting the young plant outside. This provides many benefits such as elongating the growing season, ensuring adequate quantities and quality of light, ensuring seedlings have adequate nutrients in the seed starting mix, ensuring seeds stay at correct humidity, heat, and moisture level for germination, and saving space in the garden. Many crops will not be harvestable unless they are started inside so if a gardener wants to plant these crops in their garden without starting the plants themselves, they will need to purchase transplants which are commonly available at garden centers, plant nurseries, and big-box stores. It is crucial that transplanting is done correctly. This generally implies providing the plants with enough soil so they do not become root-bound (roots wrapping in circles around transplant container), providing a hardening-off period (slow exposure to sun, wind, and cold), providing sufficient light, water, and nutrients, and choosing the correct plants to start indoors as some plants do not do well with the transplanting process.

There are varying methods of starting your seeds. The most prevalent method would be to start seeds in transplant (plug) trays or in planters/pots. Another method is starting seeds in soil blocks (small cubes of compressed potting soil, compost, and/or other seed-starting media), which may reduce transplant shock and stop root-binding because they allow air pruning of the roots. Some plants such as onions and various herbs may be efficiently started by scattering their seeds on top of soil in a large tray where the seedlings will later be teased apart from each other and replanted in the garden or pots.