Tomato Transplants

I was reading Brett Markham's Mini-Farming this morning. I got the book from the library because the librarian was just bringing it out to put a brand new copy on the shelf. I realized that the tomatoes that I have not yet got into the garden (because my new raised beds are not finished, which is because kids are costing us money for school and an upcoming marriage) are suffering from nutrient deficiencies. Specifically, the underside of the leaves are purple which suggests a lack of phosphorus. So, my morning task was to get the remaining tomatoes into larger pots.

I'm writing this just so I can remember what I did. I'm not sure this will work well, but I intend to learn from everything I do. My goal was to get the seedlings into pots that had high quality soil, planted deeply enough to encourage root growth from the stem.

I used left over plastic pots and filled each with composted horse manure and brought them to the garden where the other tomatoes are planted. The manure is well composted.

I added a handful of 10-10-10 and a handful of dolomitic limestone. I put the mixture into the garden bed and mixed it with about an equal about of soil. My goal with this step was to mix the compost, soil, fertilizer and lime so that the soil in the pot would be more or less just like the soil they will ultimately end up in.

This had some added benefits as I saw it.

First, because I used soil in front of each of my 18 tomato plants, rotating around the raised bed with each plant, I was able to examine each. Some are still small. Others are growing pretty nicely now. One even had a flower. I picked off suckers. Second, I was able to do a little bit of weeding. Because of all the rain lately, those stray grass and weed seeds are starting to sprout. Third, because I added a full pot of compost, mixed it, and then pulled out a pot full of mixture, the raised bed benefited with a little added fertilizer, lime, and compost.

I originally had 24 Marglobe seedlings and 12 Brandywine seedlings. One of my 18 Marglobes that was planted in the raised bed died. I replaced it earlier with another seedling, leaving 5 unplanted Marglobes. One of the Brandywine pots actually had two seedlings growing in it. I plucked one out when I was potting them, but decided to go ahead and put the plucked seedling in a pot. I don't know if it will survive, but if it does, I retain my 18-per-bed system.