Make a Garden Dibble Handle for Comfort

In a previous article, I illustrated how to make a custom garden dibber. This customized garden dibber allows the repotting of seedling plugs from the seedling tray. The garden dibber has been effective in preventing the damage of tender roots of young seedlings.

The garden dibber, or garden dibble as others would call it, is essentially made of two basic parts: the dibble head and the dibble handle. The dibble head is molded concrete. The dibble handle is really nothing more than a metal rod that sticks out from the dibble head. It's a scrap reinforcement bar (or rebar) that is only 9 mm thick.

The rebar, as I've found, is really too thin for my hand to hold. The dibble head, being made of concrete, is a bit heavy and there isn't enough leverage when holding the garden dibble.

Repotting Seedling Plugs from the Garden Tray

After pricking the seedling plug from the garden seedling tray, the next thing to do is repot it. For most garden plants, repotting is fairly straightforward. Take a stick or use a finger to create a hole on the ground or the pot's soil. Put the seedling's root ball in and backfill with garden soil.

Some garden seedlings though have a more delicate root system where the roots break off easily if mishandled. Sometimes an unintentional sudden tap on the main stem may break young brittle roots. Such is the case for Bougainvillea seedlings grown from cuttings.

Picking Seedling Plugs from the Garden Tray

The use of a garden seedling tray is a practical way to grow garden plants from seeds and cuttings. A garden seedling tray has multiple cells where one can sow seeds or stick cuttings for propagation. Each cell has its own drain hole to let out excess water. Seedlings can be watered with light spraying or sprinkling or even by soaking the entire tray in a soaking tub.

But the most practical use of the seedling tray is the convenience in picking seedlings mature enough for transplanting. Because cells are partitioned in a seedling tray, it's easy enough to harvest seedlings without disturbing the other seedlings in the adjacent cells.

Custom Garden Dibber for Seedling Plugs

Wikipedia defines a dibber or dibble or dibbler as "a pointed wooden stick for making holes in the ground so that seeds, seedlings or small bulbs can be planted. Dibbers come in a variety of designs including the straight dibber, T-handled dibber, trowel dibber, and L-shaped dibber."

Actually, it doesn't have to be made of wood just like the one in the thumbnail. Unlike the usual pointed tool, you can even customize the tool's shape.

The idea behind a customized dibber is simple. Unlike ordinary dibbers, this dibber has a customized head that has exactly the same shape and size of the seedling plug or root ball. In other words, it provides a perfect fit for the seedling's root ball and the hole that will accommodate it.

Improvised Soaking Tubs to Water Seedlings

Soaking seedlings in a tray using tubs is a practical method for watering and fertilizing young plants. This would be nice if you had the garden tray and a matching soaking tub to utilize. But what if you didn't have or find an appropriate soaking tub to match your garden tray? Or what if you only had a couple of tubs, bins or pans?

In these situations, you can improvise a setup where you can still use the bins or trays that you have at hand. But you do need a couple pieces of whatever you have. This article discusses how you can set this up with nothing more than a big disposable plastic garbage bag.

Soaking Seedlings in Tray Using a Tub

For convenience, we re-pot seedlings propagated from cuttings into seedling bags. This frees up the seedling trays for other cutting propagation and the new seedling bags allows the roots to grow in a bigger and coarser medium. These many bagged seedlings are located in different parts of the garden, some in our nursery racks, some on the ground and elsewhere. In this situation, watering the seedlings using a garden sprayer may not be the best method.

One practical option is had was to place the seedlings in garden mesh trays and then position these in my homemade garden nursery racks. I then soak these mesh trays in soaking tubs to water the seedlings. Here's a garden mesh tray with the seedlings inside. The garden mesh tray is put in a soaking tub to water the seedlings.