These little babies were planted way back in March. They are now ready to stretch their legs and move to individual pots, where they will grow for another month or so. I can tell they are ready because they have grown their secondary leaves. See? Have a closer look...
the first set of leaves are the primary leaves, and they don't have a distinct shape to them. The secondary leaves are also known as the true leaves. The look like the real thing...in this case ...tomatoes. One should never transplant one's seedlings unless they have grown a healthy set of secondary leaves...
In this neck of the woods, I cannot put my tomatoes in the big bed in the garden until the end of May...so I let them grow in the pots in the nursery, (er, grow house). Here they can develop a nice strong root system. I tickle the tops of them daily by lightly brushing my hand over the plants. This stimulates and strengthens the stems. I enjoy nurturing my seedlings...and I understand why they call it a nursery. This year I am raising:
- Pineapple
- Black Plum
- Yellow Pear
- Green Zebra
- Reisentraube
- Blondkopchen
- Early Girl
- Amish Paste
- Caspian Pink
- Bellestar
- Sweet Yellow Tangerine
5 comments:
Your plants look great. I bought tomato plants because I am not so good at transitioning from inside to out. Black plum are very good but slightly odd looking. I absolutely love Reisentraube and Blondkopchen just keeps on producing. It is also a big, big chicken favorite, so watch yourself. Amish Paste is also one of my favorites.
HI! What happens if you put your new little tomatos out on the front porch, and you forgot the chickens were out? Ack! their "true leaves" got plucked! Now they're on top of the BBQ--hopefully they'll recover in the tomato hospital!
Now, I've heard about tickling my tomatos from two different sources, I guess you know what I'll be doing! My tomatos are getting really big because I've already had to transplant them to bigger pots. My son, the green thumb of course is doing even better than me!
We finally started to rototill the big garden but got called away. My potatoes wanted to be planted....last week or the week b4 or the week b4 that. I am so far behind.
I love propagating, too. I only have a window sill and am really late this year, but have tomato seedlings coming along. Like another commenter we have potatoes almost digging the trenches themselves!
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