Potting up
Daddy's rule of soup is:
"Choose your pot wisely, because soup will expand to fill the space
provided." My rule of indoors plants is: "Don't buy potting soil
because your plants will expand to fill the soil available." Since
I found a second stump dirt tree this year, that means I've been having fun starting more seeds inside than usual.
In
a perfect world, seedlings in flats would be potted up soon after they
emerge into larger containers with higher-fertility soil. My
seedlings don't usually enjoy that perfect world, but I figured my
tomatoes deserved a bit of pampering this year. So I mixed an
equal quantity of stump dirt and well-composted horse manure in the
wheelbarrow and used that mixture to fill individual pots for the baby
tomatoes. This way, the plants can keep growing without hitting
any boundaries, which is what keeps seedlings big and strong.
The broccoli, cabbage,
and onion seedlings will go out in the garden much sooner, so I opted
for a lazier approach to their health. Instead of 
potting
up, I simply soaked some composted manure in water and used that rich
tea to water the seedlings right in their flats. Stump dirt is
relatively low in nitrogen, so this should give the seedlings a boost
without requiring the extra space that larger pots would require.
Of course, emptying out
the tomato flat meant that I had an extra flat on hand, and I had just
enough stump dirt leftover from my weekend walk to fill that flat
up. So I started a few more varieties of tomatoes, some peppers,
Malabar spinach, and even a few zinnias. It's a good thing I've
run out of stump dirt for the moment because I've also run out of space
to put plants in front of sunny windows....
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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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