So it's that time again - time to move the tomato plants from the little seedling cells into seedling pots. I'm especially careful when doing this since I only minimally thin the tomatoes - I only remove the ones that are significantly smaller than the rest. For any of the other cells, I very carefully separate each tomato plant and transplant them each separately into larger pots. It's rare that I lose one when I do that, but it happens occasionally. I still end up with way more plants doing this than if I were to only select one per cell. But it also means that I end up with a lot of tomatoes - about 7 trays worth this time.

The key is being very, very careful with the roots. Massage the ball of dirt and roots gently and then carefully separate each tomato by holding the plant and gently wiggling it away from the others. Then you can plant each one of them. You might break a few plants when doing this, but once you get the hang of it you'll end up with more plants than if you saved one per cell.

I've been wanting to do some outdoor gardening, but with my back injury it makes it difficult. Today I finally was able to make it out there and do some gardening. I put some of my window boxes back out into the yard, cleared out dead leaves, and planted a whole bunch of plants.

I now have peas, beans, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, kale, and bok choi growing outside in my garden.

Well, some of the items are growing so well that I am going to have to transplant them into bigger pots soon. That's especially true of some of the pease, beans, and lettuce. They're just all growing so fast. The peas are about ready to grab onto the lights.

Well, I couldn't sleep last night, so I figured I'd use the time to transplant some of the bigger plants over to pots that were of a larger size. These ones are about 2.5x2.5, which is nearly double the space they had in the containers they were in. Not only that, but when it comes to greens I have a very hard time putting just one seed in each pot because the seeds are so tiny. As such, the baby choi and romaine lettuce I transplanted often times had 3-5 plants growing in a single slot. I carefully separated them and put each into its own pot, which will allow them to grow much faster.

I've really got to get a moment this weekend to transplant the squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and cucumbers outside. They are getting so big that their leaves overlap each other. They're also blocking the light from some of my smaller seedlings, like the eggplant and peppers.

So today it's time to transplant more of my seedlings. This time it's the herbs. Once they start to get several true leaves on them, I go ahead and move them to the planters they'll be in outside. I go ahead and plant them all, as I know only some will make it through the process. If several of them end up growing large, I'll transplant them again to another set of these planters that I have, which means more herbs for me! ;)

With the basil I can also transplant it into some of my larger tomato planters once those are going, as the two plants love to be together.

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.

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.