I posted this before but it got removed due to not having a user flair. Basically, I’m growing tomatoes. I’m not very gooood at keeping any plant alive 😅 but I really want to have success with these. I read that it isn’t good to plant more than 2 in a cell but I was in a hurry and the seeds kept sticking to my hands that I had used to mix wet soil . So what should I do next? And when would be the best time to move these to bigger containers? When should I fertilize? And any other tips, tricks, advice would be a life saver!
by Necessaryailments
17 Comments
Thin them out. Just take scissors to the smaller seedling in each cell till the biggest one remains. You can up pot when you get the first set of true leaves (the second set of leaves they grow).
You can sepeeate them when you move to the next step. I get bigger pots for them to live in once the true leaves pop in. Im talking abt the pot they will stay in untill you plant btw. You can have 2 in those just fine and even plant 2 next to each other just plant them some what deep. It does look like you are abt 2 week from this stage, but what i do is give the plants some liquid fertalizer at this point so they arent fighting to much.
They look good. Give them lots of light. You can transplant now into 3 inch containers. You can gently pull the plants apart and bury them deeper. Don’t worry about roots ripping. Tomatoes grow new roots easily.
Use scissors to cut them off at the soil line. Thin them so there’s only one per cell. It can be hard emotionally, or just wanting to keep more plants, but the ones left will be much healthier in the long run for it. If you try to pull them out or separate them you can just end up damaging all of them, so it’s counter productive- so just cut the extras down.
How many tomato plants were you intending on growing??
If you’re ok with having more tomato plants, instead of thinning them you can easily separate them into their own pot. No rush but any time now you can do this – just tease the roots apart and they can handle it from my experience. I always start my tomatoes in the same little pot in clusters and separate them without much loss.
As for fertilizing…..I start as soon as true leaves appear – like yours. I use a simple balanced soluble fertilizer like a 10-10–10 & dilute it to about half strength. Some are fussy about using ‘organic’ fertilizers but the key IMO is to use soluble regardless.
Keep the soil moist – not wet or dry – and give them lots of sun. I imagine your climate poses some challenges for growing tomatoes given you heat and humidity & I can only guess. Perhaps there are some experts in your area
This is… a lot of tomatoes. They’ll each need at least a couple feet of space in the ground, be over 5ft tall, and (hopefully) produce many tomatoes each. I would definitely take the advice to thin the seedlings to one per cell and ensure you’ve got the space for this many mature plants.
I would get them closer to the light source as well. Some of them look stretched out a bit
Transfer some of them on containers and donate/give them to friends or neighbors
It’s a newbie mistake to start too many tomatoes. A very common mistake. Thin these like others say, and really think about planting only the quantity you have room for per recommended spacing. Tomatoes tend to get fungus/blight issues more than any other diseases, and packing plants in too tight limits air flow – creating an ideal environment for this problems.
Enough tomato plants to supply Lower Manhattan for the winter
besides thinning, also try and get the light closer to reduce leginess
Execution time ✂️
Thin those tomato babies out to 1/pot. Select the one that looks weakest, and cut the stem right off at dirt level. Leave the strongest.
Do Not pluck or pull them; this badly disturbs the roots of the remaining tomatoes. Tomatoes are tough critters but that’s a lot of abuse to such tender babies.
They look great, actually! The official way is to trim the weakest ones with little scissors, but sometimes if you’re careful you can prick out all the plants and plant each one (right up to its neck – they’ll grow roots along the whole stem) each in its own cup or pot. You can fertilize anytime with a super weak diluted seaweed solution. Point a fan at them, gently, too, and brush your hand over the tops. This helps them grow stronger stems.
Honestly when I first made this same mistake, I either kept two and vined them together as they grew or separated each plant. I had ~150 plants. You can sink them in sh*t soil and they’ll still grow, especially if mulched. I couldn’t thin them, I never do and am still enjoying fresh frozen fruit from the harvest 2 years ago.
I know from my personal experience that Roma’s need a very consistent watering schedule. All my tomatoes did well except the Roma’s.
YouTube – search for The Millennial Gardener out of Wilmington, NC. This guy KNOWS his shit and explains everything very clearly. Learned more from watching 3 hours of him than in 3 months of my master gardener course!