Have you ever unearthed the congested tangle confined within each cell of a seedling tray at transplant time, when tiny roots had already hit their compartment’s wall and started circling because there was nowhere else to grow?
We’ve all certainly confronted another unwanted result of conventional seed-sowing methods: the pileup of leftover plastic cell packs better skipped in the name of the environment.
One pushback against both issues is to become a soil-blocking convert, learning to form trays of free-standing cubes of compressed germinating mix to sow into instead. For many gardeners and farmers who learn how, including Ron DiGravio, the product technician for tools and supplies at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine, there has been no looking back.
Mr. DiGravio discovered soil blocking when he and his partner were ramping up to farm vegetables full-time about 15 years ago. Like many adopters, they found their way to the technique in the writings of Eliot Coleman, the influential proponent of organic farming, who had his own soil-blocking epiphany in 1976 while visiting a European farm.
“The first book I got was Eliot Coleman’s ‘The Organic Grower,’ the bible, and he talked about soil blocks,” Mr. DiGravio recalled about the 1989 book. “So we said, ‘Well, if Eliot’s doing that, that’s what we have to do.’”
He loved skipping the extra plastic, and found the method versatile. “Anything that you would typically transplant will generally work pretty well on a soil block,” he said. “Tomatoes and peppers are really good.”
