Nursery trays also called seedlings trays are one of the most needed farm inputs for the raising of seedlings. Most farmers nowadays use nursery trays to raise their seedlings before they transplant them.
Seedlings trays are usually made of polythene. They are also usually black in colour and UV resistant. Seedlings trays have holes in them. They come in different types namely 104 nursery trays, 128 nursery trays and 200 nursery trays etc.
This blog post explains how seedlings can be grown in nursery trays.
How to Grow Seedlings in Nursery Trays
The following are the steps you need to take in order to grow seedlings in nursery trays:
Buy your seedlings trays from well-known dealers like Veggie Concept. Do not buy seedlings trays because the price of the nursery trays appears very cheap. You may buy sub-standard nursery trays that will last for just a few weeks.
Get a suitable growing medium. You can use your soil, coco peat, perlite, sawdust or other types of substrates. I strongly advise you use a sterile growing medium like coco peat.
If coco peat is chosen as the substrate, you need to break up the coco peat into fine particles and place them in the holes or cells in the nursery trays. You must fill up all the holes in the nursery trays with the coco peat.
Immediately after filling up the nursery trays with the coco peat, saturate the coco peat with water. Just keep pouring water into the cells of the nursery trays. The excess water will wash off excess salt from the coco peat and also make the coco peat more suitable for seedlings growing.
You can use calcium magnesium nitrate fertilizer to buffer the coco peat and remove excess potassium from the peat. Just mix the calcium magnesium nitrate fertilizer in water and pour in the cells of the nursery trays.
Put one seed of the vegetable crop in each hole or cell of the nursery tray and gently dip the seed into the cell in the tray. Cover the seed with the growing medium in the nursery tray.
Ensure that the nursery tray and the medium in it do not get dry at any point in time. Constant wetting with water is necessary.
Continue to wet the coco peat in the nursery trays and the seedlings until you transplant the seedlings.
Fertilize the seedlings in the nursery trays as advised by your agronomist.
Harden off the seedlings before transplanting.
Do you wish to buy nursery trays in Nigeria? If yes, why not contact us on 08025141924 or send an email to sales@veggieconcept.ng.