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( 9amq of 11)
Regardless of whether seeds are germinated in the soil ecosystem where the plant will grow or is sown in containers or in raised beds or sown in seed trays, all of these seeds can potentially germinate and, due to suboptimal conditions, become leggy and stretched. Leggy means the stem immediately grows tall, thin and long. This is not a good sign for most plants. The main reason this occurs is lack of sufficient light. Other reasons are secondary. Plants need a sufficient spectrum of light in order to produce food through photosynthesis before the small packet of energy stored in the seed runs out. This search for light is an immediate pressing priority need.
In most cases, leggy stretched spindly seedlings, regardless of the reason why, if detected early, can be fixed, saved, recovered, strengthened and healed by immediately doing the following.
1. Immediately move the plant to an area where it gets more and stronger sunlight.
If the plant was grown indoors, in a greenhouse or in the shade, you will have to slowly move the plant into stronger light over the course of one week. This is called “hardening off.”
If the plant was grown in a movable container outdoors, the hardening off period should only take three to four days. This is because completely sheltered plants not only have to adjust to light, but also temperature and air fluctuations day and night.
If the plant is growing where you want it to grow, you will have to remove or trim other plants. If this is not possible, then move the plant by digging up a large shovel-full of soil with it. This plant will then need to be slightly sheltered for a few days, unless you are fortunate to be moving the plant during slightly cooler temperatures and cloudy overcast days.
2. Make sure the plant has enough room for its roots to grow as deeply and widely as they wish.
This means get the plant in the soil outside or in a much larger container.
This includes making sure the growing medium, hopefully soil, is soil (fully alive), thus nutrient-rich or is soil-like with as much soil life as possible. If the plant is not being grown in the ground in soil, then make sure the container has enough nutrients. However, DO NOT add any fertilizer until the plant is showing new growth. Avoid fertilizer altogether and feed the soil using organic matter that slowly decomposes. Just like us, when plants are healing, they need rest and plenty of fluids, then eat when they begin feeling better, but eat small light meals. Do not fertilize leggy seedlings until they are healed.
Make sure the soil in the new location is broadly and deeply loosened.
Remember, plants grown in soil, never need to be fertilized. Only the soil needs to be fed through the activities of the life in the soil and the organic matter in and on the soil that feeds that life. This, by default, feeds plants. If you are fertilizing or feeding specific plants and using specific amendments to feed plants, you do not yet have optimal growing conditions for plants. Your soil is not yet thriving. You are acting as a nanny and bottle feeding your plants rather than allowing your plants to breastfeed from Mother Earth. This has been discussed elsewhere. In other words you don't put milk into a mother in order for her to pass that milk to the child. No, instead you make sure the mother receives the best nutrition possible in all aspects of self, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. The mother then is ensured of passing on the best breastmilk nutrition to the child.
3. Make sure the plant has sufficient water.
The best way to do this is to mulch the plants, then water initially, then allow rain to do the watering unless rain is infrequent and the soil is dry. Mulch the plants enough to retain water for three to four days and then mulch a little bit more and then one more time in another three to four days. This mulching process covers three times in ten days. You will place the mulch around the stem to help the stem stand up. You want the plant to stand up the way it is supposed to. By supporting the stem with mulch you are giving the plant support until it is able to stand straight on its own as it grows taller. Mulch a large area around the plant. In this area, as long as it is not touching the stem, you can mulch heavily immediately.
Note #1: I have seen where placing too much mulch touching the stem very early before the plant has adjusted to the new amount of light, will usually cause an additional stress to a stem that is not thick, tough or hardened. You can mulch plants up to the bottom of the first leaves. Some plants you can mulch higher, but this should not come into play because we are talking about seedlings that are no more than 48 hours sprouted and that are unlikely to put forth much more growth until their conditions are improved and the seedling becomes resettled and re-acclimated.
Note #2: The greatest danger in mulching too much too close to young tender seedling stems, leggy or not, is when fresh green undried grass clippings are used. These clippings produce a lot of heat, a lot of heat. Fresh grass clippings can still be used around any seedling, but these fresh grass clippings should be thoroughly watered when they are initially placed around the seedling.
Note #3: By default, soil also means mulch. In order for ground and dirt to be soil it must be an ecosystem, a component of which is mulch (various forms of organic matter). Black plastic is not mulch. Properly mulched soil around plants can hold enough water to sustain the soil ecosystem, including plants even if it doesn't rain for 14 to 21 days. Therefore then, spend less time and resources on watering and watering systems and more time and resources on mulch and mulching systems. Mulch serves all purposes and makes everyone happy.
4. Check the seedlings frequently every day and perhaps two to three times per day if possible to make sure they are looking okay and are progressing by growing new leaves and the stem is thickening. Check for leaf wilt, leaf color and soil moisture. Adjust light and water as necessary.
5. So what we have done to help the seedling strengthen and heal thy self is address the Primordial Four of Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. We increased fire (sunlight), earth (soil solid nutrients) and water retention and availability (liquid nutrient). The plant should already be getting enough above surface wind (air). It should also be getting enough below surface wind (oxygen) if planted in soil. We should remain mindful however, that indoor grown plants or plants grown in protected environments, will not have the same wind experiences as plants grown in completely natural conditions, thus those protected plants will have weaker genetics, although they will still usually produce fruit.
6. I have never had leggy seedlings when planting outdoors in the soil, except in two instances. When I sowed seeds in the wrong sun exposure location and when I sowed seeds but didn't have any mulch. I covered the entire area of bare exposed earth with pieces of cardboard with holes poked in them to block the sun, let in water while generating soil heat and retaining moisture. The plants sprouted faster than I expected and had grown without light for about 24 hours. This was long enough for the seedlings to grow leggy about one to two inches. I took the above steps and now the plants, though taller than normal, are stronger and have many leaves that are even bigger than the same plants sown several weeks earlier in more optimal germinating conditions, but not optimal maturing conditions. The soil was not loosened broadly enough, only in the planting hole and mulch, because not available, was not applied to a broad enough area. The living mulch of natural plant cover is insufficient because the soil is heavily compacted and rocky and these well-adapted perennials are most certainly using a lot of water. It was either remove the natural plants and have bare soil or leave them as a living mulch that keeps the soil cooler and help minimize insect damage and eventually feed creatures above and below the soil.
7. These kinds of considerations bring us to Spirit, which is the fifth member of the Primordial Four, thus making them the Primordial Five. By using our spirit to help us understand things, including what plants need and how they grow naturally, when we see a weak seedling, we can begin to take immediately convalescing steps to nudge the seedling back towards having what it needs to heal thy self. This is the approach we would take with ourselves or perhaps with a baby.
We diagnose the problem, reduce the solution to a few main steps, then start applying them immediately. We then followup frequently throughout each day for several days until we see improvements, then we taper off certain aspects. If the child seems to get worse or show no improvement, we double-check and adjust and get more information. All this is more of a basic intuitive spirit-led approach that applies to the growth and development of anything, including our own projects that also have a life of their own, but not on their own or all alone.
8. By using the Primordial Five as a checklist, you can diagnose and help plants strengthen and heal thy self with a lot of help from their friends in the ecosystem and a little help from you, another friend. You can use the same approach for your own personal health.
