There comes a time when we want a bit of space to call our own.
For me it was a bedroom wall on which to pin my Donny Osmond posters and moon over my puppy love in private.
For tomato seedlings it’s space and light to grow. That’s when they need Pricking Out.
Pricking out is to remove seedlings from the seed tray or communal pot into individual pots in order to give them more space and light to grow.
The ideal time to do this is when the tomato seedlings are very small in order to minimize damage to their roots. Recommendations for the timing of this vary. The recommendation I have come across most frequently is to transplant the tomato seedlings as soon as the seed leaves have grown sufficiently, to allow you to pick them up and handle them by their seed leaves. This could be as soon as by the 5th or 6th day after germination. However other recommendations are to wait until the seedlings have formed their 2nd pair of true leaves or have grown 3-4 true leaves.
Whilst advice on timing may differ, there is consistency how to handle seedlings. Never by their stems, always by their leaves. Handling seedlings by their stems can lead to bruising and so disease.
Size of pot.
The seedlings will be having been sharing space in a seed tray or in a 7.5cm or 10cm flower pot. The purpose of transplanting them is to put them in an individual pot. Recommendations on the size of pot the tomato seedlings should be transplanted to are all within the 7 to 9cm range. But I have also seen recommendation for putting them into a much larger 13cm pot to reduce the number of times that they will need to be transplanted.
How
To get the seedling out of the tray or pot you will need to use something to ease it out with. Recommended implements can include dibbers, pencils, knitting needles, chopsticks or cutlery esp. dining forks!
I used a desert spoon which was fine.
Before you extract the seedling from its existing home fill the new pot with compost and make a hole in the compost to accommodate the seedling. I planted the seeding deep in the hole so that most of the stem, to just below the seed leaves was buried. This was based on the advice I was given at the Wisley Grow Your Own Q&A session back in March. I then gently added more compost around the seedling so that it was held in place and watered by placing in a tray of water and gently watering the top of the compost. Most of the recommendations were for multi purpose compost.
Also if you now have more seedlings than you want plants this is the time to take a deep breath and ditch the less robust looking seedlings. I have got better at this as I have seen that my seeds do actually germinate! Seeing is most definitely believing!
So whilst they may not have Donny’s natty way with crushed velvet purple caps I also harbour great dreams for my tomato plants!
How do you decide when to Prick Out your tomato seedlings ?
