Any help would be greatly appreciated. I up-potted 14 seedlings 2 days ago, and they immediately wilted, 4 are dead for sure, and only 2-14 look okay. All of them lost their cotyledon leaves. Glaciers and San Marzanos. Room is at least 60F. I made a mistake and kept the heat mat turned too high after germination, but I set it to 60F for the past week. I went to do another batch today, and they immediately wilted upon up-potting. I'm just kind-of miffed. Every video that I've watched has said that tomatoes are super easy, but I'm certainly not seeing that. My only seed experience is black locusts, and peppers, and both of those were easy.
- What temperature should my soil be when up-potting? This seems to be the most obvious reason for my failure. The soil temp was around 50F on both occasions. I'm assuming that a low temp like that can shock the plants? I'm heating my soil to room temp this time.
- I was reading that you should keep your seedlings out of sunlight for a day or two after transplanting. Should I pull down my shades?
-Is this normal when up-potting?
-Are my tomatoes toast? - Is it bad to trim shriveled and dryed out leaves?
The first pic are the ones that I up-potted 2 days ago(10 plants in a gray tray). The pic with a single plant is of one that I up potted an hour ago.
by LongRoadToCompetence
14 Comments
I’d try to repot and bury the stem up to about an inch below the leaves. They’re still pretty weak and leggy to handle a transplant with that much stem above the soil.
Normal, its called transplant shock. Keep em moist
This happens sometimes if you damage the roots. Should be fine. Use some toothpicks to keep leaves out of the soil.
You potted them up when they are still pretty small. They don’t have a lot of root structure to help mitigate transplant shock. When you transplant tomatoes, particularly small plants, water them well before repotting, be as gentle as possible, bury them deep so that only an inch of stem is above the soil, water them well after you replant, don’t fertilize them, and keep them out of direct sun or high intensity light for a day or so.
Since these are drooping and you already potted them up, you can mist them with a spray bottle every couple hours and put them in a low light place for a day or two. They should bounce back pretty quickly.
How much did you handle the roots? I have never experienced transplant shock and I have potted hundreds of plants. It makes me wonder how much people rough up roots when transferring them. Get them under a bright light and they should perk up. They need light directly overhead.
I agree with tomatocrazzie. Too soon to pot them up. But now that you have, I think it’s transplant shock. They should recover.
They were wilting before you transplanted them. They aren’t receiving enough light. Those are very leggy seedlings.
Those look like they just need more water in the original picture. I sadly have over 30 tomatoes still in small containers and they’re huge without looking like that. Didn’t spend enough on dirt for all of them to move to larger containers.
There may be other problems as well but primarily those tomatoes look like they are desperately looking for light.
Are you using any indoor lights?
you potentially did a lot of things wrong. Soil temp should be around 80 in a quality sterile soil for a 3 – 6 day germ. They’ll still germ in a cooler soil but will take longer. Those seedlings were too young to upot . How did you handle them? The slightest pinch on the main stem will be a death sentence at that age. Pick a better YouTube channel.
Way way too soon. Also they need more light
Could be too low humidity if its super dry or possibly the opposite if its super humid but thats less likely. Odds are your vpd is way off or you are overwatering your soil or using something that packs way too tight.
Edit – also yes i agree w everyone else its way too early to pot them up
And to answer your last question, I’d not have done any trimming on those seedlings. They are too small and fragile.
What is the medium you are planting them in? Some of the twisting almost looks like herbicide damage