Repotting day
I'm only willing to
carry so many pots in and out when the nights are still
cold. But now that we've got at least a week of above-40 nights
planned, I figure I can give our sad-looking seedlings a little more
space. The light will do them more good than the room, but both
will probably be appreciated for the next month before we can safely
set tender vegetables out in the ground.
The one plant that
thrived despite low light levels inside was the tindora (perennial
cucumber) from a reader. I had put all of the tubers in one pot
when they first came because I wasn't sure how well they'd do, and that
decision was fine for most of the winter when the cucumbers sulked
through chilly indoor nights. However, as soon as it started
warming up, the tindora took off and started vining across everyone
else. Time to give each plant its own pot.
It's a good thing the
tindora is thriving since it's one of the few inside plants that isn't
just an early gamble for which I have outdoor backups. If some of
my sad-looking tomato seedlings perk up, they'll probably mean
homegrown fruits about a week earlier, but that's not such a big deal
in the grand scheme of things since the quick-hoops starts will
definitely provide the majority of our harvest.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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We've re-potted the celery twice...the first time, from its too-close plants with their initial first leaves, was very tedious, but Maggie did laboriously prick them out and reset into egg carton cups, using a chopstick. The earth was not very fluffy, mixed with some stump dirt. This past Sunday I re-potted these plants into bigger pots, and was able to use a spoon, to scoop out the egg carton sets, and put 2 into 2 in. pots, or 3 into 3 in...They don't seem to ahve any setbacks at all--have been outside on the front porch, which doesn't have a roof, for about 2 weeks. I did shade them some, in the beginning, and protected them from the too strong wind. I have oodles of celery plants!! The tomatoes that are 3-4 in high have also been re-potted--I actually sink the baby plants very deep into the pot. Even with the celery, I sprinkled a fluffier mix of sifted soils around the stems, sort of a mulch. So far my basil has just sat there, and I think the soil it's in is too fluffy, but I'm not going to re-pot them yet. And I do have a few peppers. One last thing--my poor skinny asparagus is a last cause this year...I so need to mulch it! And the strawberries have started to bloom, but I can tell things are sort of stale-mated there, tho maybe I can keep them happy with more nourishment. My peas still haven't come up! I do have spinach. And have put out your 3 currant bushes along the wineberries in the front--I was so impressed with the good earth uinder those wine-berries, which is a natural soil replenisher:)
Mom --- Looking at my photos, I wish I'd repotted my tomatoes deeper too....
Mitsy --- I wouldn't count on no more freezes. Usually, we have a blackberry and/or dogwood winter (meaning frosts while those plants are blooming). The lore I usually hear is when the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear (which will come in a couple of weeks) you're safe to plant semi-tender vegetables like corn, but that doesn't seem to be the case every year either. I generally wait until ten days before our frost-free date (so, early May) and plant then if no frosts are forecast.
Your little tomatoes are actually doing a lot better than mine. They give me hope for early tomatoes even if my inside starts plummet.
Thanks again!
By the way, our echinacea is finally starting to come up, so hopefully yours are too!