OK, so one of the things I want to do this season is go through the individual pieces of our entire germination kit and describe their purpose in more detail. Since our kit is three pieces, this will be a three part series. We do have articles and videos on this subject, of course, but we have to assume many of you may not be aware of our content elsewhere.
The foundation of our kit uses the 1020 tray, sometimes called a standard seed tray, and it’s probably one of the most vital tools we use in raising seedlings and transplants. It’s unoriginally called a 1020 tray because it’s roughly 10 inches by 20 inches in dimension. At it’s core, the 1020 tray is about plant mobility. It allows you to move a whole lot of plants with relatively minimal labor.
There’s a whole bunch of accessories you can buy for the 1020 tray system which are helpful across various stages of plant growth. We’ll get to those later. You can buy (or often, find) cheap, flimsy 1020 trays at your local nursery’s recycle bin. But, they are also made in very heavy duty versions that can last for decades and also in pretty colors like you see with ours. We go for those as we’re regularly doing this and quality gear saves us money (and unneeded waste) in the long run.
The 1020 tray is foundational because we use them across all stages of plant growth. Whether it’s actual germination, a baby seedling, a regular size transplant or a five foot tomato plant ready for transplant. The 1020 tray is what you’ll find all our plants in! From basic plant care, to hardening off, to watering and to moving our plants here or there, the amount of labor the 1020 trays actually save us is astounding.
We also like the 1020 tray system since it’s extremely space efficient. We’re trying to grow 1,000+ plants in a small indoor space, so every square inch has to be used efficiently. Squares and rectangles help us achieve density that you just cannot get from things like round pots and solo cups.
In later stages of life, we also use the 1020 tray for what we call the bottom watering technique. This greatly reduces our labor requirements for watering our transplants and also helps us ensure deep, thorough watering of our soil. For this reason, we strongly prefer 1020 trays without any holes. The trays with holes are good for greenhouse or outdoor applications where you’re typically using a hose end sprayer and want excess water to escape.
Though these trays are not strictly essential for growing from seed, they are incredibly helpful tools for the gardener to have. Even if you don’t grow from seed, you can use them to toss your nursery bought transplants in and for countless other purposes. They’re probably our “most used tool” in our garden each year!
