Potting up again

The day finally came and we potted up the largest plants another time. We put them into 3 quart pots (trivia fact, this size pot is sometimes referred to as a gallon pot by some people).

I spent a lot of time hemming and hawing over whether to do this and when and such. Many experience gardners advise against going to such big pots and in hindsight I am starting to see their point. It is a relatively expensive thing to do with the cost of the larger pots and the potting mix. It is also unwieldly to have the plants in the big pots and impractical to have them under lights once they are.

All of that said, we started too early and the plants need to wait at least 2-3 more weeks until they get planted outside and they were outgrowing their pots.

We got a good deal on a big stack of pots and two different types of potting soil. The first soil is Miracle Grow mix and the other is MetroMix 830.

We selected the 8 largest plants and put half of them into miracle grow and the other half into the MetroMix.

*Pix*

The jungle (before)



Materials


First Plant






Stripping the lower branches (gasp)



Colin watering a new plant



The 8 plants take their first trip outside



Now that they are done they look kind of little in their new pots. The weather has been crummy the past few days including today. We had them outside for a few hours this morning and an hour or so tonight (the sun actually came out for a while). The rest of the time they were in their new home in the garage.

There are probably 8 more plants that will need bigger pots and the rest can hopefully survive in the size that they are in now.

More Maters (seeds)

I hit the seed sales this weekend. Home Depot had 1/2 price seeds, so did Steins, Menards were discounted. I picked up the following varieties:

Beefsteak (hybrid)
Bloody Butcher *
Brandywine *
Chocolate Cherry
Containers Choice (hybrid) *
Early Girl (hybrid) *
Mortgage Lifter
Red Zebra *
Roma (hybrid)
Tiny Tim *

I managed not to start one of everything. Only the ones that are starred :-). These are for: backup plan, or my early varieties, or some things to try in containers.

I started everything on Monday (the 27th) except for the Tiny Tim and Container Choice which I started yesterday (the 29th).

With the new additions we now have 11 different varieties in some stage of growth.

Coming up spring

Things outside are starting to show signs of life. The hostas that I divided a few weeks back are leafing out.

Still Growing

Last Friday (day 32) Colin and I took some pics while we were watering the maters.

Colin and the biggest plants



Representative sample



Earlier in the week (on Tuesday the 21st) I potted up the second wave of tomato seedlings including the San Marzanos.

Four Specimens and more

It's day 27 for the tomato project.

I'll start out with some recent activities; I was off of work (vacation) this whole past week. I spent a lot of time working inside remodeling my kitchen ceiling and some time working outside around the yard. The weather was really gorgeous the past couple of days!

I was able to do some veggie work too:

I potted up four of the Viva Italia seedlings that I started a while back.

Colin and I sprouted some peas inside and he planted them in the garden yesterday.

Some of the Jalepenos and bell peppers finally sprouted and are under the lights.

I got some tomato seeds in the mail this week; they are a variety from China. I was
so excited that I had to put a few in dirt just to see how they do. I think that was on Thursday.

Now onto the big news: the tomatoes are really getting big! I took pictures of four of the biggest specimens, one of each variety. Here they are:

All 4



Lemon Boy



Sweet 100



Better Boy



Viva Italia



I am starting to worry about having to pot up again; I don't want them to get rootbound before I get them outside. (And outside is 4 weeks away, minimum).

New shoots and big roots

The San Marzano seeds sprouted yesterday (right on schedule). There are 4 of them up. The Viva Italias that I put in a while back are sprouted too. These will probably be the last seeds that I start this year.



There are big roots in the plants that we potted up last week. I can't really believe how big after just one week.

Dividing Hostas

We have a pond at our house; its a small one with a little stream that flows into it. We put it in during the summer of 2003; the hostas that line the stream have been in since then. Last summer the ones at the end of the stream were so large that they reached across the stream and obscured the water.

Pond in 2003 (hostas in pots)



Pond in 2008 (Huge Hostas)
btw, its not the same taro after all those years



So, its time to divide the hostas. After much deliberation I decided to do it in the spring before the leaves emerge. Although it is still pretty cold out the plants are starting to peep out.

I started on the plant that is at the right side of the stream in the two photos above. I used my sturdy flat spade to dig all the way around the plant. I couldn't really slice under the bottom the way I was instructed so I ended up carefully prying the plant out of the hole. My shovel has a forged head and it is really strong.

Hosta before (Spilt Milk)



Clump out of hole



Rinsing the roots



The hostas has a bunch of rocks stuck in their root balls, it was really amazing how many were stuck in there. I was pretty unimpressed with the soil in the bottom of the holes so I dug down a little deeper and then I went and got some nice topsoil from my leaf compost area.

Nice compost



I don't have any pictures of cutting up the clumps. I didn't have a cameraman for most of the proceedings.

Here is the first plant all reinstalled.



Regal Splendor before



Leftovers; I am shipping some of these in plant exchanges. Others are going to friends and family in the area.



My helper



Super Gardener (check out my t-shirt)



Self portrait

45 and counting

The theme tonight is scope creep, but its all good.

I tallied up all of the plants that have been "potted up".

There are 45 total. The breakdown is:

Tomatoes
15 Yellow Boy
10 Better Boy
7 Sweet 100
3 Viva Italia

Herbs
6 Basil
4 Cilantro

We also have 2 musk melon in peat pots and the two mixed herb pots.

Waiting in the wings are some Viva seedlings that just sprouted and the San Marzano, jalepeno and bell peppers that are still sprouting.

Out of control?

Don't these things always seem to get out of hand? We ran out of space under the 2 lights and had to hang a third one up. Just moved one from a different place in the basement so at least we didn't spend any more money.

3 lights



More babies

New Seeds!

Because we don't have enough plants yet ;-) I stopped at Home Depot tonight to see what kinds of seed selection they had. We didn't get very good germination on our Roma plants (Viva Italia to be more exact).

I was really happy to see that HD had more than the typical bland Burpee assortment.

I picked up a packet of San Marzano seeds. Our first heirloom variety. San Marzano is a paste type tomato that according to wikipedia "are considered by many chefs to be the best sauce tomatoes in the world."

I planted six seeds, a little stingy perhaps but I only really need a few more paste type plants so I didn't want to go overboard. Hopefully those will be sprouted by Sunday or so.

Potting Up

Yesterday was a big day. As I predicted I 'potted up' the first of the tomatoes. If you don't know, potting up is a term for moving the seedlings into a larger and/or solitary container. We had planted 3 seeds per pot and had originally intended to thin with scissors and just let them grow in the original pots. I guess a lot has changed since then because the new plan is to move all viable seedlings into their own individual pots. I am convinced that this extra effort will pay off in the long run.

Between yesterday and today I potted up 29 plants.

Before



During



Right up to the 'Cots'







Soldiers

Coming and going

The jalepenos that we planted never did germinate. They were from 2003 so maybe that had something to do with it. We bought some new jalepeno seeds and some bell peppers and I started 4 cells of each today. Also I started some extra roma and sweet 100 sometime during the week because those haven't done as well.

I have a small dilemma because the germinating seeds would prefer 80 degrees (F) and the growing seedlings would prefer 65. I compromised by moving the space heater further from the seedlings and turning it up a ways and moving the new seeds closer to the heat.

I think that I will start the process of potting up some of the larger seedlings tomorrow. I am going to use clear plastic cups for the next round as suggested by someone on the tomato forum. This is another controversial choice but I like the idea of being able to see the roots.

I realised in the past few days that I was not watering the seedlings enough at the start. In fact I don't think that I ever got the soil mix wet enough at the start. Live and learn.

True Leaves

Our true leaves came in! The first leaves that come out when a plant sprouts from the seed are called cotyledons and are actually part of the seed. The 'true' leaves don't emerge for a while (in our case about a week).

The seedlings in the bigger pots are doing a little better than the ones in the small but this is probably due to some other factor like watering or light.

We have tuned our overall setup, added some 2x4s to extend the tabletop to the full length of the shop lights and boosted the whole table up with blocks on the bottom.

New Setup





True Leaves (aren't the little guys getting big?)







These guys are a little smaller




Our herbs are struggling a little bit

Also we never wrote down which order we planted the herbs in. Here is one of the pots. You can play the guess the seedling game.




The basil was easy. I thought the tall wispy ones were cilantro. The really teeny tiny ones are oregano. But I couldn't tell what the last two were. Not knowing where to go next I did the unthinkable. I tasted one of the seedlings (horrors). It was cilantro ; I sure didn't see that coming! So then I realized that what I thought was cilantro was actually dill and the other was parsley by process of elimination. The cilantro and parsley look alike; duh, should have known that all along.

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