I was able to pick up some more of the flats of larger seedling containers as well as more seedling soil, so I did a lot more transplanting today. My husband and sister helped me to clear the table, move the light and stand, and add the leaf to the table so that there was more room. That allowed me to have plenty of room for all of the plants.

I spent some more time transplanting plants today. I had only picked up four flats of the larger pots yesterday, so I was limited in how many plants I could do. So I finished off the squash and did a bunch of the cucumbers. 

Did you know that cucumber plants smell like cucumbers? I love working with them because of their smell.

Today I did one of the things that is hardest for me - thinning plants. Each of my seedlings is like a baby to me and I have a hard time getting rid of them. Last year I carefully separated each extra tomato plant and then replanted them. Almost every one of them survived. But that meant I had a LOT of tomato plants. Way too many. I had a hard time even giving them all away.

Now that my zucchini is getting big, it's about time to move them up to the next sized container. This gives the plant more room to grow, more soil to pull nutrients from, etc. If you wait too long, you can kill your plants.

I wait for the first "true leaves" to show up and grow to a good size. By this point the plant is already bigger around than the little spot it's in, which means they all start crowding each other. Then I transplant.

So yesterday I was working on transplanting zucchini and squash into bigger containers. However, I forgot to make certain that every set of 6 seedlings had a marker in them. So about 20 minutes into the process I realized that I wasn't certain which plant was which. And have you ever tried to tell what plant is a crookneck squash, a straightneck squash, and a pumpkin plant? It gets easier once the plants are bigger, but at this size they essentially look identical.

There are some items I grow from seeds that go directly outdoors when they reach a certain size. Onions and peas are two of those (beans would be a third). Regular onions I plant directly outdoors since they have a large seed onion. Bunching onions, on the other hand, are tiny seeds and seem to work best if I start them indoors. These are onions that you would grow for their stems - green onions. I love green onions and eat them on a lot of things. As such, I try to grow at least two window boxes of these every year.

More and more true leaves are popping up everywhere. I can tell it's getting pretty close to time to transplant some of these seedlings. When I lift up the pots in order to put water in the watering tray I can see a lot of roots hanging down. I can just imagine what the root system must be like inside the pots. Don't want to let those roots get too crowded - that is a good way to kill your seedlings.