If you followed our blog post at the end of January and planted your seeds then you should be ready for replanting. If you didn’t plant seeds yet and still have a desire, it’s not too late.
I planted tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers; various types of each, and all but one yielded multiple seedlings. Once theses seedlings reach 3 - 4 inches it’s time to replant them. I transfer them into a slightly larger pot with the intentions of doing another replant in a month or so. If you desire, you can plant your seedlings directly into your large containers that will hold your plants throughout the growing season. My reasoning for going into smaller containers is two-fold:
- The smaller pots are space savers. I tend to plant too many rather than too few plants so I proceed in a gradual upsize.
- I plan to replant the majority of my plants into the ground in my garden so there’s no reason to waste a lot of time and dirt by going into large containers.
Replanting is quite simple at this point. If you used the pre-packaged peat pellets they do a great job of holding onto the root system so all you have to do is fill a container with good soil and put your plants in. I use a mix of peat and garden soil and bury the plants where only the top maybe 2” are sticking out. At this phase, what happens under ground is more important than what happens above.
Yes your plants will need light so a fluorescent lighting system works great. Give them 10-12 hours of light, keep the room warm so the soil stays that way, and keep the dirt moist but do not water excessively.
I also thin to only 2 plants at this point; anything more will only crowd the roots. In a couple weeks you may want to thin to a single plant going with whichever one looks the strongest.
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