The Modern Victory Garden

The primary group of tomatoes for the 2010 growing season were started February 13th.   They are now 4 weeks old and ready to move up to larger containers to give them more root room and fresh soil.   Tomatoes are one plant that I try to re pot at least once before planting them out in their permanent bed in the garden - because each time they are planted you can place them more deeply into the soil and additional roots will form along the buried stem area.   I started 144 tomatoes on February 13th and with some germination failures, I am now at about 132 seedlings and of those, most are now ready for potting up.   Yesterday I re potted 36 of them and this morning I tackled another 15 before we headed off for the afternoon to go see a movie (Alice in Wonderland in 3-D).   If I can manage to do 15 to 20 plants each evening all through this coming week then I should have them all re potted by next weekend.                                             

When I am doing some potting up, I like to assemble all the items I need prior to getting started.                                                                 

I use a simple dishpan (purchased from a dollar store a number of years ago) and fill it with my potting soil mix.   I also set out two stacked solid seedling trays.   I stack them because the larger pots filled with damp soil are very heavy and one tray is just too flimsy to safely hold them.   I use solid trays because I want to bottom water the pots while working on the others.   I fill the tray with warmish water deep enough that the bottom holes in the pots will be completely submerged when set into the tray.   The plants, pots, permanent marker pen, and plant tags are also set out.                         

I reuse plant marker tags for varieties I routinely grow, but in these pictures I am potting up some Market Miracle tomatoes that I grew from seed provided by Daphne from Daphne’s Dandelions.    Since these are new to me this year, I need to create tags for them.   I use just one tag for each 6-pack initially, so when I pot up to individual larger containers I have to add more tags so each pot can have it’s own.                              

Each pot is dipped into the soil mix to just fill the bottom area.                    

A tomato seedling is then gently popped out of the growing cell and placed in the center of the pot.   Soil mix is placed around the sides of the root ball and gently pressed firm to hold the seedling upright.                            

The rest of the pot is then filled with the soil mix and gently firmed in around the tomato.                                                                                      

The pot is then placed in the waiting tray of warm water and allowed to begin hydrating from the bottom.                                                                

The last step is to add the individual plant tags.                                    

Here’s the tray of 15 seedlings I finished up this morning.                         

As you can see, I recycle pots.   A lot of my friends and co-workers know that I reuse pots and save them for me, which saves money and is better environmentally.    In addition to bottom watering, I also water the pots gently just at the soil surface to ensure they are fully hydrated before draining off the water from the tray.   These tomatoes are a little stressed from the potting up process so they were placed on the heat mat and under the grow lights to recuperate.   The two trays of seedlings I repotted yesterday were moved out to the greenhouse this morning – joining the 5 older super early Siletz tomatoes.

These young plants were just as stressed after potting up as the ones I did today but are now quite rebounded.  

They will be brought into the shop at night but will reside in the greenhouse during the day.   The super early Siletz plants (in the back of the last picture) continue to receive extra TLC and actually come into the house at night, which is much warmer.   The Siletz plants were potted up three weeks ago and are almost ready for another potting up.   Hopefully I will get that attended to next weekend.

I have experienced an 8% loss from germination failures for the February 13th tomato planting.   It will be interesting to see how many more I lose to transplanting shock, accident, and/or just failure to thrive or disease.   I plant way more than I need because inevitably some losses will occur - some years much more so than others.   So far, things are progressing well and the potted up plants are bouncing back from the transplanting experience. 

Lots more tomatoes to be re potted.  I will be spending my evenings in the shop this week to get them all attended to.   

Laura

aka kitsapfreedomgardener or kitsapFG