I was asked by someone how I got the seedlings out of the lil6ers. I use a 9" straight cake frosting knife.
What I do (and it's no way the correct way, but what works for this garden mama) is to take my knife and go around the 4 sides of the section much like you do a cake or bread that you need to get out of the pan after baking.
I then leave the blade in on one side, pinch the bottom of the lil6er to shove out and voila:
I then dust with Mykos and sit in the center of what will be my sink pot. I then fill the rest with dirt and tag.
All in all, I transplanted 17 seedlings. I'm leaving them set in front of the patio door until I get them sprayed with neem and tagged with a yellow sticky trap. I ran out of promix and bought a bag at the greenhouse. It's marked all over: the preferred brand of commercial growers. Frankly it's like the generic bag of topsoil I get at my local bigbox. Clumps of clay, uncomposted leftovers, sticks etc. it says it's to have perlite and a good blend of manure etc. it looks like they scraped it off someone's new home building lot and bagged up. Potting soil has been a devil this season. Even my promix has been less then desirable! What's up manufacturers? Even my finished compost looks better than this!
Sorry I went down that rabbit hole.
I'm pleased w my dahlia seedlings. They are growing well and getting big (the first ones!). I'll have to count how many total I have the next time I head to the basement. I'm hoping to see all sorts of pretties come forth soon enough.
Hope my experience helps the next one. 💐
Not a lot to report. Most of the seedlings are still young of the newly planted. Of the seeds I had collected I had 3 more sprout. Not great germination rate but I'm learning as I go and I think I may have collected them when they weren't quite mature enough. My plan this year is to leave the second blooms on the plants and let them go earlier. The most I got from my seeds were the seedheads I didn't realize until I was cutting back. These were usually the ones in crazy spots I would miss but evidently the bees did not.
It's to hit 70° today in my area which is delightful. I'm ready for winter to truly shove on out of here. Hopefully in the next few days I'll have bigger plants to share. You can only look at so many seedlings and say divine! 🌿
Who would have thought a few short days ago I'd end up with as many sprouts. I'll be reworking my garden layout to accommodate these little guys and hope they continue to do well.
I was asked how I move the seedlings from the lil6ers and will try to do a photo journey when it's time to move these to the next pots. I found what works for me and my little setup.
My next challenge is to rearrange under the lights. As I'm limited to light source length to my shelf length; throw in that I'm also not wanting to overwhelm the electric with so many lights, timer, fan or heat mat. Crazy. My friends on one of the threads laughs when I say it's time to buy a lotto. I would really love more land and a greenhouse! As is, my land is a small town city lot that has a fort for the kids and some room for them to play, my garden and flower beds. I cram and jam when it comes to it all. So a lotto win would be delightful! I even have the greenhouse picked out: one of those British Hartleys. Oh a girl can dream.
What I can use is my little greenhouse shelf once it's warmer at night outside. Of course in theory I should really have a bigger one or multiple shelves. I have a lot of dahlias. And this seed starting adds to it all.
I'm off to go tend to the littles and see what I have growing. See how many new sprouts and get my sink pots ready to pot up. And, I await the tubers coming in the mail. Oh - totally ready for spring and getting things into the dirt outside!
So I did some reading and experimenting and I'm choosing to say with the seeds that the white is not a mold. I left part of my seeds above ground so I decided to give a tug with the white things and they tugged back.
In my readings half of what I read was mold oh get rid of them before you have a mess. And the other half of what I read said young roots leave them alone.
I'm choosing this philosophy and will see what happens over the next week. If I have sprouts fantastic. If it is indeed mold I'll have a mess. I do have more seeds so I'm not too worried.
As I've said, this is my year to experiment and see what seed growing in the dahlia garden will do. We learn by doing. Well I should preface, I learn by doing!
Happy day all! 
I'm not really sure what to think. I saw the same thing happen with the FM seeds and then a few days later I had sprouts. Here's the deal:
It's not the best photo, but there is that white hairy thing. That's my seed. I left a bit of the seed exposed above the dirt line so I can keep an eye on what's going on. This is how I did my seeds (after the paper towel method didn't agree with my seeds) and with the FM seeds and all of them that sprouts have done this. It's like a whiteish spider web just by the seed (maybe a hairy mold?) and then I find shortly thereafter a day or two I have a sprout. Is this how the seed breaks down to send out a sprout? I've no clue. My seeds are in well dampened pro-mix on a heat mat with a humidity dome. Maybe these guys are rotting, but I'd have to disagree thus far as I have about 25 4-8" plants already with the past seeds.
And in case you ask, I have the first seedling from the bunch of seeds I received the other day:
And if you have great eyesight and you look to the left of the white plant tag by the sprout you'll see another hairy seed pile. I will try to take a picture of how many of these I've got going on and if indeed I end up with sprouts soon.
