This Is The Most DREADED Yet Important Thing To Do As Gardeners

What's going on everyone. In today's episode, I'm going to show you the best time to thin your different crops. Let's go. So when it comes to thinning, it is really important to do so. And a lot of gardeners don't like to do this because they get sentimental about their crops. And I get it. Your seeds sprouted for you. It's endearing, but it's actually not setting them up for success by not thinning, especially when they're in cells like this. There's a couple of things that can happen. The first thing is that they get really crowded in the root system and that ultimately starves them of water and nutrients, which leads them to be stressed. Second thing is that because they're growing in a confined space, they don't have a lot of room for them to kind of stretch their leaves out without actually crowding themselves out or crowding their neighbor out. And what happens is then they get stressed for sunlight and then you start to get leggy seedlings where they start to stretch and they get all kind of misshapen. The third thing that can happen is when you're growing crops in a small area, it can oftentimes hold moisture as they get bigger. And that moisture can lead to things like root rot or damping off, which are problems that happen later on when there's not enough airflow in between your seedlings. And so thinning your plants out is actually a really beneficial thing and it's going to set them up for success. And it's also going to ensure you're going to be planting the healthiest plants out in your garden. Okay. So when it comes to different crops here, the time that you thin is going to vary for a couple of different things. And we'll get into that. I've got here a tray of some tomato seedlings. They're just starting to put on their first set of adult leaves. I got here a tray of some broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, some brassicas. And then I also have here some much more developed peppers. Now these peppers, they've been in this tray for about four weeks now. So they're pretty developed. As you can see, two sets of adult leaves. They're looking great. I also have here some onions. These are just starting to sprout, so I'm not too worried about thinning these yet, but we'll talk about something like that. And then we also have here a tray of some herbs. This is our English thyme. And you can see pretty small cell size, but there's quite a few plants growing up in these smaller cells here. The time that you're going to be thinning is based on a couple of different variables. The first variable is how small the cell size is. Like I said, in this tray right here with the time, these cells are really small. And so the amount of soil that's in those cells is not that much. And so when you have cells that are small and you have a lot of plants growing in that same cell, you're going to be competing for the space that's available. And so you want to make sure that you thin faster earlier when the cell size is small. Compare that to cell size like this. These are some six cell trays here. If I was growing those thyme plants in these six cell trays, I probably wouldn't even thin at all. And that's because there's enough soil for the pace at which those plants grow. We'll talk about that in a second. A little hint, a little spoiler, but the pace at which those plants grow, there really won't ever be any competition in these size trays until they're ready to move out into the garden. So I probably wouldn't thin in that case. Now compare that to something like a tomato, right? Tomato is growing in a small cell like this. They grow pretty fast. They're already putting on adult leaves and because they grow pretty fast and the root system grows pretty fast, they won't last that long in these trays here. So we're going to thin very early on. In the case of these three inch pots here, these onions are growing up in what we considered a multi-sown method. And that means we're sowing a bunch of seeds very densely in this tray. And when it comes to onions, we're not going to thin them at all. So it does really vary on the crop, but it also varies on the size of the cell. That's the first biggest thing. The larger the cell is, the more forgiveness it's going to have. But also you don't necessarily want to go, as we've talked about, up to a larger cell size just because, because that can have some negative side effects as well. Go check out our seed starting mistakes video. Really important that you don't start in too big of a cell because that soil can hold on to too much water, which leads to dampening off and root rot, which is a problem. The second variable that decides kind of when I thin has to do with how fast the crop grows. So in the case of this English thyme, like I just alluded to, this crop grows really slowly, and that correlates to how fast the root system develops as well. And so despite the fact these are in really, really small cells, these are going to be fine growing in here for another week or two before I either have to thin or move them to a larger container. If you didn't want to do any thinning, spoiler for the video we're going to do next, you don't have to thin if you plan on moving it to a larger container to accommodate for that extra root, uh, that extra root growth, and just give them more, more soil to kind of adventure in. So they're not too cramped. You could do that, but assuming you don't want to move them to a larger container and you want to just thin to buy time until they're ready to plant out in the garden. This is when you'd thin something like a slow growing seedling, right? So we have here is the English thyme and we're going to thin to about two plants. Now with thyme, because it can grow up pretty closely together, these cells here that have like four, four plants growing in them, we're going to thin those down to two plants. We don't need one plant because that plant is so small and so slow growing that it'll be fine for the next month in this tray, despite it being a small cell. Same thing goes for this lemongrass here. This lemongrass is a real slow growing grass. It's an herb. And because it's slow growing, we can leave these in this tray here for probably the next at least three to five weeks, which is surprising. But because there's a few growing in here that are like three plants per cell, we're going to come in here and thin down to one plant because it's quite a lot larger than the thyme, but it is still slow growing. And so the pace really dictates when we're going to be thinning. Compare that to the, like I said, a tomato. Tomato is very fast growing. I mean, or even this pepper. I mean like these peppers are only five weeks old. Look at that. They are fully developed. These things are ready to rock. And so because a faster growing seedling is obviously going to have a faster growing root system, we want to accommodate for that foliage growth. We don't want it to be too crowded up top, but also that corresponding root development, which we don't want it to be too crowded down below as well. And so we're going to be thinning to just one seedling per cell, or in some cases we're also going to thin. And then in the next couple of weeks, we're also going to transplant to accommodate just so that that one plant is not too cramped. Once you see that first set of adult leaves kind of squeaking through those cotyledon leaves opening up, that is when we can start to thin because that has a really high probability of survival after that point. And so the mortality rate of brassicas pretty high mortality rate of tomato seedlings, pepper seedlings, pretty low. And so that really has a lot to decide on how aggressive we're going to thin, but also when we're going to thin. Next, I'm going to show you how to thin. If you've never done this before, it's really simple. Check it out. So with these tomatoes here, like I said, we want to thin to one plant. We don't want two seedlings growing in this tray because they grow fast and the cells are small and they also have a really high chance of survival. So in the case here, we're starting to get two seedlings here. We're going to come in and we're going to choose the healthiest one. Obviously this seedling here, we're isolating that out. This seedling is larger, starting to get some adult leaves than this one here. So we're going to come in here and at the base, we're going to clip that out. Coming over here, we're going to see, okay, there's another one here. Sometimes they look identical and you really have to kind of just eeny, meeny, miny, moe it and someone's unlucky. Now in the case of this right here, one is more centered. I will always, if it looks identical, I'll always pick the one that's more centered just so that it's not going to be growing up on the edge of a cell that could interfere with, you know, another plant's development. Same thing with this one here, this crop or this tomato here is right on the edge, but they look about identical. Coming over here, this one here, they both look about identical. So I'm going to pick the one that's more centered and you just do that. It's really simple. In this case here, we have three, we have three seedlings growing up. This one as you can tell is far more underdeveloped. So I'm going to take this one first and then I'm going to pick the most center, which happens to be the biggest. And that's what we're going to do with this whole tray is going to get thinned down to one seedling. It's really important to have some nice precision snips. I can't tell you how nice it is to have accuracy. We use either these or we use the Fiskars micro tip snips to get in there. So we have nice accurate cuts. Now, in the case of these seedlings here, these are just fresh. These are brand new. Now, I still, some people would say, wait until they start to form the first set of adult leaves. I still, because I'm going off the premise that the chance of these dying, if the conditions are kept great, is pretty low. I'm still going to come in here and thin. I'm going to thin one just so I don't have to come back and do it later. Cause I'm doing it right now. Anyways, might as well save myself a step. And that is tomatoes. So up next is a slow growing herb like this lemongrass here. So with lemongrass, like I said, we want to wait for this plant to get developed. These new seedlings here that have just like one or two sets of leaves. We're not going to thin those just yet because the chance of those dying is pretty, pretty high. But once they start to grow and something like lemongrass gets two or even three sets of leaves, we're going to come in here and thin. And this, there's not many that need to be thinned in this, because again, germination rate's going to be lower. The die-off rate's going to be higher. So I'm not going to be that aggressive, but I am going to come in here and I'm going to thin out these smaller, lesser developed lemongrass seedlings, because I want this taller one right here. This is the one that I want. So I'm just coming here and thinning out those down to just one like we have here. And that's going to be far better because even though this plant is slow growing and it has a high chance of dying, once it gets to this level here, if nothing else changes, it should survive just fine. But when it's young, chance of it dying is really, really high. So I'm not going to thin until it gets to this point here. Same thing with some of these. These are getting to that point where there's about three sets of adult leaves. We're going to come in here and clip those out. And same thing would be done with the thyme. Thyme is really sensitive to moisture changes. If you overwater this for even a couple of days, you're going to start to see it dropping leaves and dying. So I'm going to come in here and again, I'm going to prune this out. I'm going to thin this out to about, because these are so small, root system is so small. I'm going to thin these down to about two plants per cell. Got one, I got two. Here I've got one, here I've got two. Thin that out there. And that way I have two seedlings growing. There's one, two, three. Take one of those out. There's another one. Some of these, some of these here have like four, even five plants growing in the same cell. And that's just like, this is, this is chaos here. So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six plants. It's just ridiculous. Obviously I must've been a little bit shaky when I was putting the seeds in this one, but they're also really, really small seeds. So someone with shaky hands like myself that would never want to be a surgeon sometimes have, have too many, have too many seeds in a cell. So I've got two there and I can come through here and you get the idea. I'm just going to thin these really slow growing herbs down to about one to two seedlings per cell. Our last are your kind of brassica crops or really anything that grows pretty fast, but also has a high likelihood of dying. So check it out. We can start to see some adult leaves just starting to poke through when those seed leaves, those cotyledon leaves start to spread. You'll notice right in the middle, you've got some adult leaves poking through. And so some of these are not fully developed yet. Some of these need a little bit more time. So I'm not going to thin all of them, but for the sake of this example here, I'm going to show you what I do when they get to that stage. I don't want to let them form adult leaves right away because as you know, on brassicas and those fast growing crops, the leaves get really big, really fast. And I don't want them to shade because what happens is then they're going to start to get leggy. Even as a seedling, check it out. Look at this, if you come in close, look at this, this seedling right here, look at how leggy the seedlings are. And this is an ideal conditions with great sunlight. These are getting full sun right out here in the greenhouse. And because these are growing up so closely together, we're starting to get some legginess on these, uh, on this, um, purple Savoy cabbage here. So I'm going to come in here and clip that out. That's going to free up that root space and that leaf zone that those leaves to kind of spread out without feeling like they're right up against bumping elbows with someone else. So then I'm also going to come in here. I'm going to thin out these ones down to just one per cell. Again, they have a high likelihood of dying. And so I don't want to thin too early because if they do die, then we're left with a cell that has nothing. And that stinks. I'm going to come in here. I'm going to thin these down to one plant at the point when they start to form that first set of adult leaves. And again, the cell size matters as well, because these are in a six cell tray. They're going to have, look at this. This is crazy. These little plants have the tiniest leaves, but check out that beautiful, absolutely gorgeous root system. That root development, you need to account for that. It's like an iceberg, right? There's usually 25% above the water and 75% below the water. And so you want to make sure that you account for that because you don't want those roots to be too crowded, especially in a small cell like this. Having a smaller cell allows you to grow more plants in a, in a smaller area, meaning you're going to be more efficient and efficiency is everything, especially when you're growing seedlings indoors and you might have your one or two grow lights to share between 200, 300 plants. So once you thin, you're going to be left with something like this. Now I thinned these peppers about two weeks ago and you'll notice we're talking one seed per cell and you have these beautiful rows with lots of airflow. Even as these plants get bigger, these are growing in a 200 cell tray. They're going to be ready for transplanting. Watch the next video. You're going to love it. But these plants are ready to be transplanted. They've been growing in here for five, almost going on six weeks. They've been seeded for six weeks growing for five weeks and there's no problems at all. No signs of stress. The root system is gorgeous and beautiful. As you can see, absolutely super developed, which is awesome. And because there's no stress, these are ready to rock and they're going to grow so much better. And you can see small cells, but one plant makes a big difference. So these peppers look gorgeous and that's what you want to look for when you're thinning. And so I hope this video helped. I hope you learned something new. If you did make sure to hit the like button, subscribe if you haven't already. And if you're a beginning gardener that hates thinning, let me know in the comments box down below. This video kind of helped encourage you to make that step to thinning. I want to encourage you guys also invest in some small snips, whether that's these tiny little snips here, these herb snips or some micro tip snips, something like that. You want to go in there and you want to have precision so you don't make a mistake. So I want to encourage you guys to invest in these. They're a small investment, but they make a big difference. So I hope you guys enjoyed. Hope you all learned something new. And as always, this is Luke from the In My Gardener channel, reminding you to grow bigger. Take care. Bye.