Shuffling

Sunday, 07 Sep 08 (posted about 3 months ago) Overcast 23°C / 74°F

I’ve been reading a lot of gardening books lately. One thing I read in two sources was that you’re supposed to replant seedlings a little deeper, up to, or even covering, the first baby leaves. This is supposed to avoid the problem of having plants fall over funny and end up with weird bent stems that aren’t as good at feeding the leaves as straight stems. My mustards were getting weird bent stems, and my arugulas had a good inch of space between their dirt and their first stem.

I’m not sure why I decided to experiment today, possibly my inability to go to my outside garden. But I dug them all up and repotted them just a little deeper. I’m sure the move was pretty traumatic, but I’ll baby them over the next few days. Despite its wiltiness, the mustard looks a heck of a lot better. If they die, I still have time to start new seedlings and lower them when they’re smaller so it will be a less traumatic move.

Want to comment?

Nax wrote:
So one should do this outside too? Or is this for replanting seedlings that were propagated indoors when you move them outdoors? All of my little experimenters are a little droopy, but we’re talking dozens and dozens of seedlings. Seems a bit labor intensive?

Posted on 08 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)
Cmagnus wrote:
Yeah, it does seem labor intensive. I’ve only read about it for transplanting starts. I am not quite sure what possessed me to experiment. I’m still not convinced it was a good idea. But the whole point of this garden is to experiment with winter gardening. One of the keys is to have the plants protected from the cold, and the mustards were flopping over and resting on the window, which would pretty much defeat the purpose. I just hope I haven’t killed them, since I gather this is something I should’ve done when they were much smaller if I was going to do it at all… I wouldn’t have bothered with this if they were outside.

Posted on 08 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)
Jolantru wrote:
Sounds like a good idea there. And plants are amazingly resilient, after we have put them through a lot of trauma.

Posted on 08 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)
Cmagnus wrote:
I dunno… they were looking pretty unhappy when I got home this evening. Not globally unhappy, just locally unhappy. The smaller plants aren’t showing the effects at all and seem quite perky. I think I’ll probably lose some leaves from the larger plants, but hopefully it will be best for them in the long run. The outer leaves of the larger plants were drying out, so I misted them. Worst case they die, but I have many more seeds where they came from.

Posted on 08 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)
Wenjomatic wrote:
My swiss chard is growing great but very lazy looking out there, the flopped over with some rain. Perhaps I’ll try some mounding around them, instead of pushing them deeper since they are fairly well established. Hmmmm.

Posted on 08 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)
Cmagnus wrote:
If you try it, just make sure not to cover the growing tip.

Posted on 08 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)
Glittertrash wrote:
With arugula (rocket), my seedlings always seem to grow long and floppy with a big stretch of nothing much between where they emerge above the soil and where the leaves start. A friend of mine recommended either mounding dirt around them or reburying them up to the leaves, and it worked wonders. So effective! The seedlings shot straight up, immediately.

But yes, very very labour intensive when you’re working with dozens or hundreds of little seedlings. What I’ve taken from this lesson is that I will in future start my arugula seedlings in trays or punnets, wait til they get to the floppy stage, then transplant them deep into a garden bed. This isn’t so much work because I can just use a pencil or something to create the narrow, deep holes to drop the plants into.

And yeah, I have to mound my silverbeet/chard to stop it flopping over too, but I usually don’t have dozens of these so it’s not quite as labour-intensive.

Posted on 10 Sep 08 (about 3 months ago)