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botanicat

When to move hellebore seedlings?

botanicat
16 years ago

I appear to have many seedling popping up around my adult plant. Right now they have only the original seed leaves and may be about an inch high. When should I try to separate or move them? Should I pot them up when small or go ahead and move to a permanent home? Thanks for the help.

Comments (3)

  • bubba62
    16 years ago

    I think it's best to move them asap in order to minimize damage to the roots of both the seedlings and parent plants. I use a pencil to gently loosen the soil below the seedling, then use it as a lever to ease the plant out of the soil. The most important thing about the process is never to touch the stem of the seedling; this causes invisible bruising which can destroy any potential for growth. Always handle only by the cotyledons at this stage. The roots, if intact, will be three-pronged, and should hang vertically into the new potting mix; and I'd recommend going with pots (deep, narrow ones are best for hellebores)to begin with. About a 50/50 mix of good soilless mix and perlite will give you the drainage the plants need. If you do decide to plant the seedlings out, I'd recommend either doing a raised bed with loose, fluffy soil, or at least backfilling with a soilless mix. If it's dry and powdery, it'll be easier to sprinkle it around the roots without compressing them, but you'll need to make sure it gets well moistened after the planting process is complete. After that, the biggest danger to seedlings is overwatering, so you need to be attentive about that, too. Hope this helps - probably way more than you wanted to know, but I've grown hundreds of Hellebore seedlings every year for about 15 years now. Here's a link to a little blog I've been writing - I just did an entry on Hellebores a couple of weeks ago.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Transitional Gardener blog

  • botanicat
    Original Author
    16 years ago

    Bubba62: Thank you so much. That is exactly what I needed to know. All of it. And I enjoyed reading your blog. You are a wealth of gardening information. After I get them all potted up I will just need to wait a 2 or 3 years to see what I have.

  • bubba62
    16 years ago

    No problem - glad I could help, and thanks for the compliment, though I usually feel more like a "wealth" of useless information! Waiting for the plants to bloom is always the hardest part, but if you plant more every year you'll have a few coming into bloom every year.

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