I want to find the kind of seed starter flats that are narrow but allow long roots; I know I could find them on google, but what do you call them? Does anyone here use them for daylily seeds?

I use parks sponges. They are excellent and I get excellent results. They are the only thing that I can count on for certain in the whole daylily cycle. Lyle also used them till recently when he just got to many seedling to make it doable. The roots grow down and just stay happy and keep growing and growing. The good thing is tho, not the long roots, but the ability for the roots in the sponge to get really fat. Almost better than that, is the transplanting. There is no shock to speak of and the plants are able to stand up and be supported. Leslie makes fun of me over my sponges, but if you cant get the seedling to get going good for you, your dead in the water...so to speak.

I just went out and took some pictures of some. Darned if someone hasnt moved the cord to download. errr well Ill keep looking for that.

What kind of sponges? Where do you get them?

Park Seeds.

There's not a whole lot of places readily available to get them when I have googled them.

I usually have to type in different things to get them to pop up in search
they are called tree trays, tree plug trays, tree trays seed, 38 Star Nursery Tree Tube Deep Tray Case

here's one place to get them
http://www.growerssolution.com... (go down to the 38 Star Nursery Tree Tube Deep Tray Case)
jrjohnson.com has some but I can't get their page to open for some reason.

Maybe Mona will see this because I gave her a link in one of the forums and I can't remember what it was.

I would love to try the sponges but when I plant over 1500 seeds it's not cost effective

No, probably wouldn't be cost effective at all. I used to use the sponges but now I just sow directly in pots outdoors. I have had fairly good results.

Do the bio sponges come out of the tray easily when you are ready to plant? I kind of like the concept as I am tired of messy planting soil - and I don't want to plant oodles of seeds...If this tray would be knocked over, do the sponges hold together, unlike potting soil?

Yes they do hold together but if you were to knock the tray over I am sure they would fall out of their little compartments. Only the sponges, unlike dirt, do not fall apart.

One year I had lots of seeds in flats on my window sills, and a wind blew them all over!

Since I don't do that many I use the sponge and love them. I have grown some big rooted seedlings in them and way past when they should have been planted and they were fine.

There you go....your just not going to get that in anything else....well let me say, I sure cant.

You've convinced me! Gonna try them...

I had no idea that anything like this was available! I've got to try them! I'm not sure that I'd start the seeds in the "bio-dome" that they sell, but I'll probably have to get that too, just to hold the sponges. This is a really great looking product! I also like the fact that I won't have to dig such big holes in the garden to fit all of the potting soil when I'm ready to transplant.

I used oasis foam back in 2006 and 2007 when I grew a bunch of seeds. It worked well too but, it too is not cost effective and it took alot of time.

I'm fixing to look for the website for the tree trays. I'll be back shortly,

I could not find my thread with Michele's info, so I did some searching:

http://www.growerssolution.com...

http://www.jrjohnson.com/searc...

rebloomnut said:Since I don't do that many I use the sponge and love them. I have grown some big rooted seedlings in them and way past when they should have been planted and they were fine.

Which size of sponge are you using? I'm thinking of starting some seeds that I purchased using the sponges. Based on what others are saying the 18 cell ones seem to be closest in size to the #38 trays, but that looks like well over 18 seedlings per tray.

I use the 60 cell block, its plenty. I started with the 40, but it was overkill, They did better in the smaller ones. Sometimes the seed is almost as big around as the sponge but fear not, I promise, youll be good. Im pretty sure the picture above is in that size sponge.