A few steps to follow to help get your seedlings safely in the ground after they have been growing in pots:
Move back any mulch or covering you have in your beds. (note the wood mulch shown in this picture is NOT approved in the Citizen Gardener method)- Dig a hole about the size of your pot, remove and save soil.
- Add a small amount of organic fertilizer.
- Carefully remove seedling from pot. (don’t pull on stem– turn upside down and carefully persuade plant to come out without damaging it) (Peat pots wick moisture out of the soil, prevent roots from penetrating, and take a long time to break down— go ahead and peel the peat pot off the root ball)
- Fix girdling / circling roots. If the roots have grown to the wall of the pot, they were forced to change directions, usually circling the pot in an intertwined mess. If you leave the roots like this, they won’t ever grow ‘out’ in the soil and plant health will suffer. Gently untangle and free up the roots. (steps 4 and 5 can be skipped if your seeds were started in soil cubes)
Place plant in hole and adjust height so that new home is at same height as old home. Tomato plants may be buried deeper if desired, but growth delay will possibly occur while new roots in correct location are grown.- Add soil around seedling and press gently down on soil to enable good soil wicking ability.
- Mark plant with marker and record date and location in your garden diary.
- Add a small amount or organic fertilizer on top of soil above root zone.
- Replace the mulch. Don’t allow mulch to come in contact with stem of plant.
- Water plant well with compost tea.
I recently purchased 33 yards of living earth vegtable mix and need advise as to how to use it properly. It does not look as if it has much soil in it. In late September I planted a few braccali plants and they don’t seem to be very happy. The mix is 12″ deep on top of clay. I watered the plants by flooding them one at a time every other day. I have no intention of a fall garden this year but to learn how to help the plants survive so that I don’t have to go through this in the spring when I plant the whole garden.
Chuck Herrington
Corsicana (South of Dallas) TX
Chuck, you might notice your plants yellowing some for the first year or so. The new soil contains an amount of wood in it, which isn’t fully composted, so the composting activity will ‘rob’ or use up available nitrogen in the soil that your plants want/need. I recommend planting it full of some nitrogen-fixing plants like peas. Even if you don’t want to harvest the crop, just having something growing in the soil will be better than letting it sit bare.
You will also probably want to add some organic fertilizer when you plant in the spring, just to get some more nitrogen available to your plants.