A quick guide to transplanting tomato seedlings

Alright.

Yes, it's been a while. Exhaustion had its way with me, but I'm fighting back! I thought I could probably just post a bunch of videos and photos of when I transplanted my tomato seedlings.

Now, I did this about one and a half weeks ago, or on May 15. That is about two weeks later than I usually would do this- but what can I say? Life is sometimes complicated.

In a normal year, my tomato plants would actually be in the ground already. This year, I was lamenting the fact that they weren't until yesterday. You know what happened yesterday, right? Northern Utah was plastered with tons of snow. Yes, on May 24, we had snow here.

So I was glad my tomato plants were not in the ground. They should be in the ground in about another week or two. That will be fine.

Anyway, I really like to keep costs down, so here's what I do for planting pots:



Once the pots are ready, you want to get a layer of dirt in there and pack it well, mainly so that the dirt doesn't just spill out the holes you just cut. Since I tend to have a lot of seedlings, I do this as an assembly line in order to be efficient.

Here's the simple process:



Next, you want to just start planting:



When everything is transplanted and placed back on the windowsill (or shelf, depending on where you are setting these), water them well. What does 'well' mean? You can water them so water comes out the bottom.

Then don't water them for a week-- or at least as long as it takes for the dirt to look quite dry. I've said this countless times, but I am happy to say it again: This wakes up your seedlings' roots.

Okay, so here are my tomatoes, all transplanted and arranged on May 15 (about 10 days ago):

And here they are today:

Not bad, eh?

Anyway, here is probably a good place to announce a revision to this blog's approach. Instead of trying what seems to be impossible at this point: a post every day, I will post stuff here on at least Tuesday and Friday.

See you Friday! I will share with you some of the things I've put in the ground and how I have protected our planting patches from our chickens.