2025 Little Easy Bean Network - Growers Of The Future Will Be Glad We Saved

[oxbow farm]

Interesting, but they seem to have a lot of wasted space - or am I misunderstanding something?
And having looked up tobacco float trays, I’m interested to know whether you actually float them in water when raising your seedlings.

The design of the Winstrip trays is to maximize air pruning of the roots so the "waste" spaces around each cell is to get more air to each cell. I haven't used them, but they are the latest hip thing in small veg growing.

I don't use ebb and flow irrigation, I just like a tray that holds more seedlings at once vs a 1020 tray.

Float irrigation ( AKA ebb and flow) is really only useful for a crop where you are growing HUGE numbers of seedlings of a crop that you want all to be ready at the same time, which is exactly what tobacco growers need. All the seedlings end up at the exact same stage with the same conditions and the watering system can keep them all watered and fertigated automatically. But if you grow lots of different crops in succession, float irrigation will end up killing most of your stuff.

I just like the trays for their size and durability. Especially since I started using injection molded trays vs the older style styrofoam trays (Speedling trays) The injection molded trays are the same size but they hold 20% more cells per tray, and they're practically indistructable vs the fragile old foam trays.

 

[Branching Out]

Interesting. Does it have an advantage for the seedlings, when their little roots are so strictly led downwards?

Yes, it definitely does. Seedlings with 4" long roots are less vulnerable to high temperatures that can kind of bake the top couple of inches of soil on a hot day. In our area we sometimes experience very dry conditions along with intense heat. For example we are in the midst of a two week stretch with no rain, and on Sunday it will be 30C(85F) just for one day-- a big jump from the 20C(68C) that we have had this week. Despite the heat I will not be at all concerned about these well-rooted young bean plants, as they will be accessing water down deep in the ground.