Patio Gardening 2010: Week 5 – Transplanting the Seedlings
Last week we started transplanting, with the beans and a few tomato plants. This week we did the bulk of the transplanting, moving the seedlings into their final containers.
Just to be safe, we’re moving an extra seedling or 2 just in case one dies off. Later we’ll thin out the weaker plants. We have so many seedlings to begin with, we might as well be careful about it.
Our poor wilty cucumbers recovered a little bit, but were still looking pretty “blah.” We decided they were long overdue for a transplant (the boyfriend’s enthusiasm results in a pot with 20+ seeds). We’re not sure if they’ll survive the transplant or not, but they certainly wouldn’t last much longer in the tiny pot. It’s possible overcrowding led to the wilting last week.
As you can see, we replanted the cucumber seedlings in recycle milk jugs. This is a thrifty way to do container gardening. We just cut off the tops with a utility knife and poked holes in the bottom to allow for proper drainage. The jugs are 1 gallon, which is the perfect size for beans, cherry tomatoes, or cucumbers.
The only plants that are left to transplant are the lettuce, zucchini, and yellow squash. From my research and talking to other people, it seems like 5 gallon buckets may be the best bet for the squashes, so we’ll have to go out and get some.
We still have some seedlings left that we haven’t transplanted. We’re continuing to recycle milk jugs as we empty them, but I’m not sure how many more seedlings we’ll transplant. The amount of plants we have right now are already a little overwhelming.
The weather is starting to warm up again, so hopefully we’ll be able to move the plants outside permanently around the end of this week. We’ve got so many pots now that it’s a major pain to move them.
Go ahead and check out the boyfriend’s video for Week 5 of our container gardening. We also talk about why it’s not a good idea to plant in metal containers:
For those who are new, this year the boyfriend and I are doing a little container gardening experiment where we are trying to grow various herbs and vegetables on our patio. We live in the city of Chicago, so traditional gardening is out of the question. You can subscribe to the RSS feed to instantly receive the posts each week and also check out our previous posts. Feel free to subscribe to our Youtube channel as well.