Red osier dogwood seedlings in the greenhouse

red osier dogwood seedlings in a tray in our greenhouse a few months after planting. the seeds were cold stratified in some damp peat moss in a fridge from jan though until april and then broadcast just on the surface of this pot, lightly covered in some vermiculite and kept watered. at this stage, they're ready to pull apart and transplant into individual pots or plugs, I find this is a good nursery system but you can also line them out into rows in a garden bed, mulch and keep watered until the fall or next spring. then decide if they're large enough to plant out where you want them to grow, or lift them with a shovel or fork while dormant and plant them into a row for another season with more spacing. this process is repeatable for any sort of woody perennials or trees, in the nursery trade the shorthand is p+1 or p+2 and that means the first year the tree was in a plug or a small pot, plus one year in the ground, or two years. dogwood are maybe fast enough growing that you'll find they're large enough to plant out after just the first year, but it's good to know that for these and any other trees you grow from seed that it's fine to give them more time to size up, and if you get there sooner then great, if not and they're small at the end of the first year, maybe it was hot and watering fell behind, maybe they were in a shaded spot, maybe the some rabbits nibbled on them - it's fine just follow the process. reading about this is old nursery and gardening books set me at ease when I started growing trees, maybe today is an industrialized greenhouse the trees are grown with just them perfect environment, water, fertilization, temperature, growing medium, pest control, sunlight, etc - but at home and in the past nursery work just built into the expectations that your trees might take two or three years to get up to size. So maybe that's why these guys are still in this pot and the end of July, I'm not in a hurry, I start more seeds than I need and some things are ok to just wait.