Most of us don’t spend much time at all looking at plant roots. Meanwhile, the things going on underground are quite wondrous. Take this humble tomato seedling, demonstrating a special power: adventitious rooting—a catchy way of saying they can grow new roots from their stems. Tomatoes, potatoes and peppers, all relatives from the nightshade family, have this ability. And? Well, if you have leggy tomato transplants, stretched from too much time indoors in tiny plug sheet cells, this ability allows for a neat trick. You can dig a little trench instead of a hole and lay the seedling on its side. Then, bury the root ball and most of the stem, gently curving up the last bit. Ta-da, a sturdy little transplant. I did this for a few leftover tomatoes two days ago. Today, I found one snapped off—wind? rabbit?—so I pulled it, revealing roots that had already started pushing out. It’s just another little bit of all that goes on in the hidden part of the garden!
tomato
Tiny jungle
Hardening off seedlings on a mainly sunshiny day. I can see tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, and bok choi. Some are for now, some a little down the line. I’ve been transplanting steadily bit by bit, rather than all out at one time, as a hedge against erratic weather changes. Same with direct seeding. It’s another experiment, and given our short season and the generally unpredictable weather, it’s risky. Then again, depending on the crop, I’ve seen plantings a week or two apart more or less even out. It’s always a gamble!
Transplants love drab weather
Transplants, like these tomatoes, do well in mostly overcast, even rainy weather for the first two or three days. Funny the way things in life can turn in an instant. One minute it’s put them in the sun, the next, welcome some cloud cover. My transplants start out under fluorescent light, a weak imitation of the sun: putting them out for a few hours, for at least two or three days, and back in to weaker light of the grow rack every night, gets them used to the sunlight. Once transplanted, though, they’ve got more to adjust to than sun. Their roots have been exposed and jostled. The nights usually get pretty cool in May, 20°F below what they’ve been used to. Maybe they sense the general vastness they’ve suddenly found themselves in, with a plant version of, “Oh my.” Whatever all is going on, it’s an adaptation. Full days of hot sun add the stress of having to pump more water into their leaves to keep from wilting. Although they’ll generally survive that sort of thing—as I’ve observed firsthand…—it’s easy to see the difference when the first few days have a good amount of cloud cover, and they really get rolling, stems thickening, the leaves turning a deep green. There are all sorts of ways, often way closer to ideal, to start seedlings indoors. For my simple, low-tech, rough-and-ready approach, this is how it seems to work!
In the photo: The little golden brown blobs scattered around are alfalfa pellets, used as fertilizer. They start of as hard pill-like cylinders, and expand to crumbly little blobs after being wet, then continue to break down as they join the soil food web.
Tomato seedlings compared
The Big Beef tomatoes on the left look so much bigger, healthier, greener, than the ones right, and they were planted a couple of weeks later. Both are in the same sized plug sheets. Both get the same time under the lights and out in the sun. Hmm…
This year, I’ve been planting smaller quantities more often, to see how a small batch approach works in our unpredictable weather. Instead of putting in four rows of carrots now, I’ll put in two now and two more in a week or so. It’s an experiment. The hard part is actually keeping track of the observations over time, so that later, there’s…data. More to come!
Tomatoes a month in
Tomato check-in, around a month after germination. On the left, the pair of plain, generic-looking seed leaves that come first—they’re still stuck together at the tip by a tiny bit of the seed shell. On the right, the true tomato leaves are taking over. See the tomato grow! :)
Tomato two weeks in
Around two weeks from germination, and the tomatoes are spreading their leaves and aiming for the sun. These Big Beef are growing together in a tray and will be separated into their own cells of soil, and maybe even small pots, all depending ono the weather and how long they stay indoors.
Toddler tomato
In the spirit of dog years and fast-growing plants, this tomato seedling at about 10 days from germination is a toddler, or maybe more an infant. Root, stem, then leaves push out of the seed and up to the light, and eventually toss the dried-out seed coat aside. We don’t need to be amateur biologists to eat a tomato, but remembering the growing journey seems to add to the enjoyment and satisfaction, just like a pinch of salt!