Potting Up Tomato Plants

The time has come to Repot / Transplant the tomato and pepper plants into bigger containers.  The tomatoes were seeded on March 10^th.  The pepper seeds were soaked on March 1^st and planted on the 6^th.  They were all seeded into 4 litre milk jug bottoms at either 9, 11 or 12 seeds per container with about 1.5 inches of potting mix in each container.  Overall germination of the tomatoes was good at 90%.

Five days before transplanting, the plants were ‘sliced’ with a sharp knife through their roots to separate them and let them recover from the stress of the slicing.  This results in a great flurry of new rootlets coming from the main roots of each plant.  Pre-slicing helps them through the dual stresses of the breaking of the roots and transplanting.  

Years ago, I had a poorer germination of one container of peppers and so didn’t need to slice and transplant some of them but left them widely spaced in the original container.  Others were transplanted and within a few weeks the non-transplanted ones were visibly smaller than the sliced and moved ones.  I believe the slicing, causing the fresh flush of rootlets, helped in growing stronger, bigger plants.

The tomatoes were moved from 9 plants per milk jug to 2.  Using a scissor, I removed the first two non-true leaves then gently lifted each plant with a tablespoon and placed it into the bottom of the new container using just a thin layer of potting soil underneath it.  After half backfilling the container, I watered them in and then finished backfilling well above those first two removed leaves.

My choice of tomato varieties this year are all from Johnny’s Seeds: 

1) Sun Gold, a small orange cherry with phenomenal flavour.  

2) Bolseno, a dependable, red slicer.  

3) Mountain Magic, a plum sized early and late dependable producer. 

4) Tiren, a large successful paste tomato with some orange shoulders.  

5) Big Beef, retrying this standard slicer.  

6) Chef’s Choice Orange, the best tasting, productive slicer I’ve found, but for some it’s just the wrong colour.  

All these varieties are indeterminate and grow well in my greenhouse up 7 and 8-foot lengths of twine using tomato clips.  Since I live in an area that is very prone to Late Blight, growing tomatoes outside isn’t really an option.  Some kind of cover from the rain is necessary, so why not enclose the sides as well = a greenhouse.

The pepper plants stay smaller, are a bit slower growing and are transplanted into their own smaller single pots.  They go back under the fluorescent tube lights.

The tomatoes now leave my fluorescent tube lights and grow under my new LED (beginner pot grower’s) grow light.  I’m using aluminum foil on plastic sign board as reflectors for that light and I’m still learning the proper spacing from the light to the leaves.

In about 3 weeks they’ll be wanting more room and so will get repotted again into their own 1+ gallon pots and will head over to the greenhouse until their time comes to be planted into the beds in the greenhouse in mid-May.  I only need 8 tomato plants for my greenhouse this year so the rest will be given away.

Happy Gardening.