Grow Your Own Plug Plants

Plug plants are seedlings which have been germinated and grown in trays of small cells.  Plug plants used to be largely confined to bedding plants and flowers but all that is now changing as edible gardening becomes more popular. The principle advantage of plug plants is that the roots can be kept relatively undisturbed when transplanting them into their final growing position.  Growing them as plug plants helps minimise this because the shape of each cell encourages the roots to bind the soil into a single plug which doesn’t fall apart when removed. The densely packed trays also mean they are a very economical way to raise plants, particularly if windowsill or greenhouse space is limited.

Although I could buy them from a garden supplier I chose not to because:

• Growing my own plug plants gives me access to a much wider range of varieties than are commercially available.  My first tray, for example, consisted of 14 different varieties of lettuce and salad leaves.
• Home grown plug plants are cheaper and can be raised in several batches to allow for variables which can’t be controlled such as a cold spell of weather.
• Few plug plant suppliers offer organically grown plants.  I suspect that the huge greenhouses they are raised in require plenty of pesticide management techniques that I prefer to avoid.
  

 

For starting off the seeds I used a great product produced by Agralan from a clever Swedish design called the ‘Compact Plug Plant Trainer’ (available in North America from Veseys).  Each tray fits neatly onto a window ledge and consists of 49 cells.  The bottom of the tray acts as a water reservoir with an ingenious capillary system to draw up just the right amount of water.  The lid can be orientated to allow ventilation or keep in warmth and when turned upside down it creates small dents in the soil for locating seeds.  Finally, when the plug plants are ready (shown by a few roots making it down through the bottom of the cells) two side catches are released and the bottom tray pushes the plug plants up and out.

In many ways this is the baby sibling of the increasingly popular Root-trainers which aresimilarly shaped pots, encouraging the good deep root growth which is particularly useful for pea and bean crops.  The main difference is that Root-trainer pots divide into two halves to access the plant, whereas the Agralan Plug Plant tray pushes them out from below I am normally rather protective about the seedling stage, when so much careful attention has gone into raising these precious little plants.  The plug plants were so simple that my son quickly got the hang of making a hole in the bed with a dibber, lifting the plug plant up by the leaf (to avoid squashing the stem), dropping it into the hole and gently firming the soil around it. Less disturbance to roots, a self-watering system which worked well and the opportunity for my young children to be more involved with this early stage of gardening.  Raising your own plug plants may not have the convenience factor of buying them from the nursery but the satisfaction of growing many varieties from seeds makes up for that.  I think I am well and truly hooked on plug plants

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