Potting Up

I have been trying to write this post for a couple of weeks now but I just haven't been able to find the time and then the one time I did sit down at the computer to get it done Blogger and Picasa were not cooperating so I gave up. So here's my latest attempt at updating the progress of the summer seedlings.

The potting up process began on April 30 with this lot of tomatoes and eggplant and another flat of pepper seedlings not shown. These seedlings were all sown of March 30 with bottom heat under grow lights. I transition the seedlings to natural light for about a week to 10 days or more before I pot them up. You can see the motley collection of pots that I scrounged up to pot them up into.

A new addition to the pot collection this year is a bunch of one-quart yougurt conatiners. My husband and I consume about 2 quarts of yogurt every week and even though I reuse the containers for a lot of things, they were starting to stack up. So, when the annual search for pots to put my seedlings into started I hit upon the brilliant idea (I hope) of drilling holes into the bottoms of the containers and using them as pots.

Here's the first round of potted up babies and more seedlings coming along. These were being coddled for the first couple of days and nights on my cozy warm living room floor (radiant heat!).

After a couple of days indoors to let the roots recover from the shock of being disentangled and then popped into new soil the plants have to go back outside. I don't bother to shade them on cloudy days but I protect the new transplants on sunny days by putting them under the patio table or I rig up some other way to shade them. These are my broccoli and kale seedlings on May 3 when the weather was cool and foggy.

The last few days have topped out at 80ºF so the brassicas have been hiding in the shade of the tomato and pepper seedlings which are sitting on the table.

The tomato and pepper seedlings are coming along ok. In the past I have schlepped the flats indoors at night to help them along, but I just can't be bothered to do that this year. They got a few nights of that treatment early on but now that the nighttime temperatures are staying above 40ºF they are just having to tought it out in the cold at night. There's still a few small pots of slow growing baccatum pepper seedlings that I have to pot up which you can see in the foreground.

The eggplant seedlings are coming along ok.

These are the Lark's Tongue kale and Apollo broccoli seedlings this morning. They have grown quite a bit since May 3.

This is a new batch of peppers and tomatoes that I potted up 2 days ago. I put them outside this morning after letting them sit in the "recovery room" for a couple of days and nights.

They get to transition to full sunlight again under a double layer of row cover cloth that I rigged up to provide some shade.

Now it's time to get the rest of those seedlings potted up...

So many plants, so little space, I can't possibly stuff all those babies into my garden so I'm thinking of having a little plant sale. Interested?