I'm in a similar position with over 200 seedlings. I'm going to keep them as long as I can. I've moved most of them up to 16 oz cups from the little 5 oz cups.

I'm out of room on my seedling bench so the smallest ones left in 5 oz cups will have to be culled a bit to make space for some of them to move up.

I have a place in mind to plant them out when the time comes but I can't fit 200 plants in there so some will have to go. I may give some away if I can find takers.

Thanks for the tips! My goal is to learn how to grow Hosta from seed and get something interesting enough worth keeping. They are mostly dedicated crosses from Doug Beilstein. I was looking for some variety, but seems like the big blue, ruffly crosses and tetraploids are dominating. Yellow or streaky not doing as well. Those puny ones are streaking! Guess I'll continue to abuse them until I'm out of room or Mother Nature takes its course.

When do seedlings start to show their blueiness? I suppose some of them are already, but I need more time to examine them.

My streakers:

Rest of the babies:

I could help you out of some of those. ;-)

theoretically .... by the 4th true leaf.. you should be able to see the future ...

yellow are obvious ... green are green ... and the blue ones have the waxy glaucous coating that makes them different that green .... but it is real subtle .... it really helps.. if you know at least momma ... as you would have a clue from that.. that she would give blues ... and if you know momma ... you can track grandma.. so that if even momma was green ... grandma may have been blue ... its those darn genetics ...

also.. by the t4th leaf.. you can see.. leaf shape.. vigor.. etc ... e.g. something from blue mouse ears.. isnt going to be as big as something from elegans ... relatively speaking ...

so.. just like having a goal ... knowing heritage.. will really help you ...

also .. the blue on hosta.. is the sky reflecting off the wax ... that is why blues in the garden are sometimes dull [cloudy days] .. and deep blue other days [cloudless days] ...

i never did my own crosses.. there was a limit to how interested i was in all the genetics .... but i always kept track of momma ... pod parent ...

you said :My goal is to learn how to grow Hosta from seed and get something interesting enough worth keeping.

i see you clearly have a goal ... and i approve ... that was my first level goal .. lol ... but when it all boiled down ... i never got to your secondary goal ... when i first started in the mid 90s... there were like 2000 named registered cultivars ... and by the time i collected 1650 of them .. there were 3000... and then what.. 10000 .. and i started thinking.. carp... they all look alike ...and nothing i grew from seed ... was ever unique enough ... to name .. or to keep ...

besides.. what the heck else do you have to do in winter ... indoors ....where you can play in the dirt.. in the house..

ken

I find it easier to pick what I like rather than try to pull out ones I don't find to be anything special. Try this--from each tray, pick the 10 or 12 that you like best and put them in a new 'first choice' tray. Then take a look again at what's left and see if there is anything that you really like. If so, put it in a 'second choice' tray. Eventually, you will get down to a bunch of seedlings that are uninspiring or too similar, and those can be discarded or rehomed. You can repeat the process with the seedlings you kept every month or two.

Plan B is to plant all of these out in a seedling bed with heavily amended soil, good drainage, and a fair amount of sun, and see what thrives and what does not.

Great idea! I think I'll do both, since its all about learning and I don't have that many to deal with. (But I definitely need to trash some more so I get that experience too, lol). I think I'd like to keep at least one from each cross too.

Some of these crosses I was looking for really dark plants with ruffles. Will those traits reveal themselves early?

by the 4th leave.. you would probably see a wave in the tiny leaf ... genetics are genetics .... they dont mature later ...

how come you ignored it when i told you to do a nursery bed.. but when he says it.. you think its a great idea ....

rotflmbo .... just kidding around ... ken

note the wave

Actually, I did have a post saying that . . . but I didn't want it to go to your head . . . so I deleted it.

Instead of trashing the ones you don't want . put them on buy and sell and get $1 or 2 from each one. It just might get someone hooked on hosta down the road

it depends on your available space. I put the best ones in bigger pots for crossing next year or the year after. on average i get 3 or 4 winners a year. the rest are ground cover. ...less yard to mow.

throw the rest in a ground cover bed and let nature cull them. if they survive and you find they still interest you next year keep them. otherwise i find lots of people want filler plants for their garden. i never have trouble giving them away.

I did it! I culled two little plants! I made a first selection of 15 plants a second selection of 10, potted up the others that were ready for giveaway/can't throw away yet and letting the little ones grow on.

"put them on buy and sell and get $1 or 2 from each one" - is there a FB group or something for that? I'm going to have an excess of Hosta and Heuchera seedlings and hate to trash them if someone could put them to a good use. I've thought about posting on Craigslist but the local CL seems to attract flaky people.

If you don't want to sell on Craigslist or FB, you can donate plants to any number of organizations such as Master Gardeners, Project Green, Habitat for Humanity, or any local gardening group that is having a spring or fall sale.