So we are finally at the stage of gardening where we start transplanting our Sprouts into the ground! Part 2 was a step by step guide for getting your seedlings planted and growing to this stage which is called the "Vegetative Stage".
The Vegetative Stage is where your plants are photosynthesizing(Sucking up the sunlight as a source of food) non-stop to gain as much nutrients as possible so they can make it to the next stage of Budding.
Transplanting is when you take your sprouts out of their tray or wherever you started them at and put them into the ground, flowering pot, or raised garden bed. This is the trickiest step in the whole process. If you did any of the following mistakes then there are much higher chances that once transplanted your plants will not live long.
Common Mistakes before transplanting:
Letting the sprouts grow too long in their tray. [Effect]- Little leaf growth but very tall growth, tap root grows too long making it harder to take out of the tray, and stunting their growth making it impossible for them to grow any larger once transplanted.
Not letting the sprouts grow long enough. [Effect]- Once transplanted they will be too shocked and die off, since not enough mature leaves they'll die off, tap root will be too small and will be unable to absorb water and nutrients from the ground.
Overwatering the sprouts. [Effect]- Stunted growth, yellow and wilting leaves, and spots on your leaves.
Not plucking your sprouts down to one per cell. [Effect]- Roots will tangle making it near impossible to transplant one plant by itself, and having to transplant multiple sprouts next to each other will cause growth problems later on.
Even if you make those mistakes, transplant your plants and see if you can get them to come back with some extra care.
Transplanting Steps:
1.Prepare the appropriate transplanting spot.
2.Create the appropriate depth and space between the sprouts you are transplanting.
3.Slowly knock out the spouts from your tray.
4.Transplant them into pre-made holes that have the appropriate space and depth.
5.Surround with soil with a small amount of firmness around the sprout to help it stand tall and secure.
6.Throughly water day one, don't allow to completely dry out for a week but do not over water.
7.Monitor until clearly established from being sun burnt, wilting from under-watering, or spotting and wilting from improper irrigation causing root rot.
Detailed Step Version:
1.Preparing the appropriate transplanting spot- This step is where you will decide where you want to transplant your sprouts too.
Think about:
Sun Exposure(Amount of Hours Per Day the Sun hits that Spot)
Water(How much water fills up that spot when it rains and does it drain well)
Soil Quality(Is there healthy soil at that spot, if not you'll need buy soil)
Below are three raised garden beds. Transplanting the sprouts to the ground or a raised garden bed are basically the same thing except that you have more control with a raised garden bed. If you are thinking of doing a design like this simply measure out your design based off how many plants you'll be planting. To help prevent the grass from growing up around your plants just dig 3-7 inches deep down to a base of dirt. Last, fill it up with your combination of dirt, compost, organic fertilizer, and aerator.
2,Creating the appropriate depth and space between the sprouts you are transplanting- This step is where you will simply space out your sprouts so they have enough room to grow instead of battling neighbor plants for nutrients. Most seed packets have all of that type of information on the back of them and if they don't then simply use Google.
3.Slowly knock out your sprouts from the tray- This part is tricky. Normally you WOULD NOT wet your sprouts before you do this. You want the soil compact but not wet or brittle dry. If you are good enough the entire cell of dirt with the roots will come out as one. The pictures i'm adding have TWO mistakes. I did not pluck AND I wet the soil so I could show you how to work through these problems because Beginner Gardeners will most likely do this their first time.
-If you did not pluck your sprouts while they grew in their tray then by the time you want to transplant you will have multiple sprouts in each cell.
-If you wet your plants before transplanting then the dirt on the bottom of the cell will not want to come out with your sprout and the tap root will easily snap spelling death for your sprout.
My Method to fix this is;
Slowly bump the bottom of each cell one at a time if possible. (Odds are that three or four cells will fall out together and you will have a wet mess of just roots tangled together. If you just dump the cells then the tap root will probably stick to the bottom of the cell with the wet dirt snapping your sprouts tap root.)
Next, the sprouts will be tangled together with their roots. You can try holding at the base of your sprouts, right above where their roots start and then gently tap and bump the roots to encourage them to untangle. If you can not get them untangled, then you'll either decide which sprout looks healthier and stronger and and pluck the other at the base, or you can plant them both and see if one will naturally win the spot.
Even if you get both of them split up, how do you decide which is the best one to plant? So like I said in Part 2 you need to look at the Leafs(Size, Color, and Health), Stem(Width, height, and straightness), and ROOTS (Amount, Tap Root Length, Health).
*For inspecting the roots I will provide pictures with captions
-Inspect the Tap Root(First and most important root of every plant which without it they would die.) The tap root is the root that you will see coming directly from the bottom of the sprout.
You want the Tap Root:
Long
Healthy
With many smaller roots growing from it
Far Left Picture: Shows that comparing two sprouts is very important. The Sprout on the left has a very long tap root with very little secondary roots coming off of it along with a small second pair of leaves. The Sprout on the right as you can see has much better leaves yet it only has secondary roots because the Tap Root was detached. The correct one to plant is the left sprout.
Middle Picture: This one has a great pair of leaves with a healthy stem but it only has a small amount of its Tap Root left with small secondary roots. I would set this one to the side and plant it if no better rooted sprouts were seen.
Far Right Picture: This one is close to perfect with a long and strong root system and near perfect leaves and stem.
4.Transplant the sprouts into pre-made holes that have the appropriately space and depth- This is pretty straight forward, all you do it set the sprout into the hole making sure that the roots go as deep as you can get them to.
5.Surround with soil with a small amount of firmness around the sprout to help it stand tall and secure.
6.Throughly water day one, don't allow to completely dry out for a week but do not over water.
7.Monitor until clearly established from being sun burnt, wilting from under-watering, or spotting and wilting from improper irrigation causing root rot.
*As usual, see any mistakes or want to pitch in, comment or write your own blog post!
Comments