Vegetable growing technique – potting on

I thought we might ooze up to the potting shed for a school lesson today. Enough of swanning about among the tulips and the fruit blossom.

This is the work horse of the garden. The engine. And right now it’s seedling season.

I’m not working in the right order, but here is the stage of the process when the little seedlings are growing well in their little cells but need to move up to larger pots.

I have found that the brassica family really don’t like it when their roots grow too large for their small pots. They sulk.  Refuse to put on lush growth once they have been planted out i the ground.

So while I can, I make sure they move up the gears.  They will start out in one tray where they germinate.  They then get pricked out and moved into small individual cells. That will be about a fortnight’s growing.  And then once I see they are thriving, they will come up one more size.

This is where we are this morning.

I give the trays a good watering so the compost is moist so I don’t have to pull hard to remove the little plants.

Then I assemble the pots. The one I use are littler round plastic ones. They are very flexible and can be squished a bit to fit onto the crowded staging benches.  Each one gets a good handful of new potting compost.

Then I get my trusty chopstick and ease out a brassica plant (here it’s East Fresian Kale). I can push the cells in the tray from the bottom and get the plants out in one go.

You can see the good root growth already. And then by holding a leaf I will place the plant into its new pot.

The temptation is to push the plant down firmly; but that will crush the fragile roots. So it’s gentle work and I add more compost around the plants to make sure the roots are well covered.

All they need then is a thorough soaking and a rummage to find a tray to hold all the newly potted on plants.

One label per tray and they are ready to grow on for another fortnight or so until they are ready to plant out in the garden.

Their only peril from now on will be lack of water and accidental cat attack.

And cabbage moth butterflies. I saw my first one day.

I keep all the windows open in the potting shed as it is wonderfully warm right now.  So they could fly in and lay their eggs on these tiny plants.  But I do have all the honesty flowers outside in the shade garden which are much sturdier. They are also members of the brassica family, and a good landing platform for these egg laying butterflies.

Fingers crossed they stay off my brassica babies. If only Artur could be trained to hunt butterflies; he could actually do some good in the potting shed rather than snoozing.