Eliminating transplant shock: my initial observations

I have a very sluggy allotment, and I can't seem to grow by direct seeding as a result:  those slimy critters just nip them off as soon as my little plants emerge.  So I must sow in a protected area and transplant.

However, my transplants are also vulnerable to slugs because of transplant shock;  if my little plant is actively growing it can usually outgrow the damage done by slugs, but during that week or two after transplant the slugs often destroy them completely.  True, they aren't that interested in some plants (beets, onions, tomatoes for instance) and it doesn't matter so much if it takes a little while for the plant to find its feet so to speak.  But I lost all my squashes, pumpkins and zucs last year to slugs after transplant.  I can't count how many little plants have gone down their voracious throats.  It's so demoralizing.

My mission is to lessen or even eliminate transplant shock--I want to plant out and have the plant keep growing, with no check whatsoever.  After several years experiments with things such as biodegradeable pots and soil blocks, I think this year I may have cracked it:  

Waste wool

I get a monthly milk delivery which is wrapped in wool insulation sheets.  Cut open the plastic wrapper, and there's a sheet of fluffy, dusty, slightly smelly wool, bits of straw included.  The wrapper suggests throwing it in the compost, which I mostly do, but this year I decided to try growing my seeds in it too.  

I tried several methods, but my favorite ended up like this:  pull apart little wispy bits of wool and put a layer 2-3 cm in the bottom of a small pot.  Either sow the seed directly on top (for big seeds like beans), or put in a bit of potting compost first and then sow;  cover the seed with an appropriate amount of potting compost, water, etc.  

Alternately, when I have a lot more seeds and need to conserve space I sow a tray thus:  cut up the wool sheet into 2-3 cm squares and lay them down flat on a seed tray.  Sow one or more seeds onto each square, cover with an appropriate amount of potting compost, water, etc.  My seed trays fit about 35 little squares (but only 15 little pots).

When transplanting out, plant the whole bundle.  The roots will be nicely attached to the wool, which seems to remain fairly fluffy.  

None of this year's woolly transplants have experienced shock.  Just for comparison, I sowed some little pots and seed modules without wool, only potting compost--these did get transplant shock.  When comparing the root systems of the two different methods, the woolly seedlings seemed to have thicker and more numerous roots, although this was just a brief comparison--more experimentation and observation is required.

However, I definitely recommend growing seeds in wool to reduce or even eliminate transplant shock.  I will be doing so from now on.

This is a very cool idea.  I would love to see more pictures of both the ways you are talking about doing it.  I think this is an issue a lot of us deal with.

I may try this with dog hair.  My LGD is going through her spring shed and I have enough hair to build another dog.  This may be a cool way to try out your seed starting method.

Your slug experiences pretty much mirror my own. Last year's garden was a disaster as slugs destroyed whole plants. Every bean plant was chewed off at the stalk within 24 hours of transplanting. Most disappointing.

Until i get permission to farm ducks in the veggie patch I think I'm going to battling them forever.

Trace, I am thinking that wool is still soft and springy when wet, and maybe that is partly why the roots really like it?  Also when transplanting, they can still grow in and through the wool until they get a good firm grip on the surrounding soil.  Maybe dog hair will be similar--I hope so, because I suspect more people have access to dogs than sheep  I will try and remember to take a few photos when next sowing a seed tray.

I have three ducks at home Mike, and my garden is delightfully slug free (or at most slug lite).  I grow the tender-est stuff here, which this year is my courgettes, root veg (which I can reliably sow direct), and cabbages;  I don't have enough room for everything I want to grow!  I really want to take the ducks to the allotment but don't have adequate fencing for them--it's on the list.

I never got around to taking a photo of the seed tray with wool (kind of past seed starting now).  But I wanted to post a quick update on how things are growing.

Most of the early transplanted beets and kohl rabi went on to grow just fine, and I've harvested many of these.  The only slight drawback to the wool at the roots is, well, wool at the roots!  Pulling up an individual kohl rabi wasn't really a problem, but I did have to extract beets very carefully from their cluster, otherwise the little puny beets would come up with the big fat beet I was trying to pull (I don't thin beets, but leave them to grow together).  The root balls of everything I pulled were large and luxurious, and while fully entangled with the partly decomposed wool, also growing well beyond it.  

Plants I have not yet pulled--such as climbing beans--have also been producing well;  certainly everything is producing as normal and I can't really tell the difference now between the wool starts and the non-wool starts in terms of production (or pest damage).  On the whole, the growing season has been good;  I'm happy to continue using wool for seed sowing in the future.

I think this is awesome, way to think out of the box.
I don't have access to wool, but I do have a lot of pet hair. Something to think about.

It's so dry I rarely have slugs and snails.  This year thank goodness we got a lot of rain late winter, early spring.   I don't know where they all came from, but they were making up for lost time.  Like you my seedlings and transplants were demolished.  I found if I cut the bottom off of the plastic pot, and cut one side,  placed it around the base of the plant, for some reason the critters left them alone.  I don't know why this worked, seems like they could go over or under it. Every time I would see damage I would do this, and it made a ton of difference.