Up-potting my seedlings

I did not grow up in a household where we gardened. Although members of my family actually live on a farm even today, I consider myself an absolute beginner. My family's knowledge of gardening to not get passed down to me through blood, nor did I pick it up as I was growing up. I have no sense of when things should be planted, how much water they need, how much space they need, or even how to choose the best seedling when thinning plants out. So as I go along this experiment, I base everything on lots of research (and advice from people). Sometimes there is a lot of information and everything works great. Sometimes there isn't. Although overall, I was satisifed with my little seedlings, there came a point where they weren't growing. I wondered and wondered when it was time to up-pot, and how exaclty to up-pot them (move them to a larger pot) but when it got to that point, all my resources were vague or silent.


Above, you can see the celery, including a plant with its first true leaf. Several weeks later all of the celery had one true leaf, but they all remained the size of that little seedling picture above. By the way, thinning out the celery was really fun because when you nibble on the leaves that you've decided to yank, they have the flavor of celery!

Finally, my spouse, who did seem to pick up a little bit of gardening sense as he grew up, hinted that it was really time. So we bought these peat pots (in photos below). If you were doing a large-scale operation, these would be too expensive; but since I knew I would only need about 60, it worked for us. The benefit is that when the plants are ready to go outside, you can just put the pot straight in the ground with the plant in it. Less stress on the plant, and easier for the gardener!


Above, the newly-up-potted celery. See how it is pretty much the same size? Very VERY soon after being up-potted, they took off, steadily growing bigger and adding more leaves!


Above, the tomatoes, sorted by variety and marked since they looked the same at this point. I up-potted the best-looking ones (strongest, tallest, most leaves, greenest), keeping a few more than I intended to plant. I'm really glad I did that. In addition, I saved some of the ones in their cells in case a few of the up-potted ones didn't make it. I was also happy with that decision, though the seedlings in egg cells were harder to water in the new set-up.




Above, the peppers. These are the Yolo Wonders, the rainbow bell peppers were still germinating! These also took off after up-potting - as you can see, they did not have their true leaves yet.

To up-pot them, I bought a new kind of seed starting mix that was closer to soil (the staff at our gardening center recommended that I continue to use seed starting mix since the seedlings were still so small). For some of the plants, I used a fork to dig out the soil pod from the egg carton. I worked the fork around the edge, loosening the soil pod, then lifted up. The problem was I had waited too long, and the roots were growing through the egg carton. I could hear the roots tearing as I lifted. Nearly all of the plants survived in spite of this abuse, but it was a lesson learned - if you are going to start seeds in egg cartons, be ready to up-pot pretty much as soon as they germinate! Or at least as soon as their embryonic leaves appear. After I couldn't handle the sound of the tearing roots anymore, I peeled the egg carton in layers (since it was so wet, this was relatively easy). The roots often didn't grow straight through the egg carton, but would grow through a layer and then snake around in between the egg carton before poking out.

I filled the new pots halfway with the seed starting mix (again, prepared with about equal parts warm water), then set the soil pod in the middle, then spooned more seed starting mixture around the edge. As you can see in the photos, I left space between the soil line and the top of the cup. With the celery, this was a good thing. With the tomatoes and peppers, this was a bad thing. Later on I learned it is best to bury the embryonic leaves when you up-pot or transplant tomatoes and peppers - you end up with a stronger plant because roots will begin to grow from where the embryonic leaves are. My tomatoes and peppers seem to be doing fine, but perhaps they would be stronger or further along if I had used that technique.

Lessons learned:
I don't regret starting the seeds in egg cartons - they were free, decent sized, and when I had seeds that weren't germinating very well I didn't have to feel like I wasted any resources. I wish that I had up-potted each individual cell as soon as the first true leaf appeared. I think some of my seeds were stunted by staying in the small cells too long.

In the future I would also like to get grow lights for my tomatoes. The peppers and celery seemed to do fine, but my tomatoes seem leggy, thin, weak, and lacking color compared to my expectations. We will see how they end up producing, but I suspect if I'm going to commit to starting seeds indoors, grow lights would give me much better results and would be well worth the investment. Based on what I paid for materials to start my seeds this year compared to what it would have cost to purchase transplants, grow lights would pay for themselves in one year.

Finally, I wish I'd known about burying the embryonic leaves. I did plant the tomatoes out last week (more on that to come!) and considered doing it then, but at that point the plant seemed too well developed. I don't know. I wish I had planted one that deeply for comparison, but it really seemed like a bad idea at that point.

All in all, I'm glad I started seeds indoors and though I made a couple of mistakes, I would consider this part a success!