It’s transplant season
It was a busy day at the North Madison Institute of Transplanting. The entire faculty cleared away winter weeds and refurbished beds because we had healthy seedlings in the greenhouse eager to be transplanted to the garden. We are, after all, the Institute of Transplanting.
Some vegetables such as beans, sunflowers and peanuts are best started by direct seeding because they don’t handle transplanting well. We’ve heard through the grapevine that corn seedlings don’t transplant well either, but we don’t grow corn.
Speaking of grapevines, dang right they might transplant well, but factors to consider are soil quality, watering schedule and competence of the transplanter. A C-student transplanter will get C-student results. F-students don’t stay with transplanting or any nature-related activities but instead represent Arkansas in Congress. A’s and B’s should get happy, healthy vines, but our focus is not grapevines here at NMIT. For vine talk, you’ll need to go to the Vine Care Academy.
We instead study the careful re-homing of seedlings which, if they are annuals, will spend their few months in the neighborhood the gardener chooses. Perennials will spend their eternity in that place, so consider shade versus partial or full sun, how big the plant gets, does it get along with its neighbors, but most important, soil quality.
Here are the top ten items to consider as you prepare to transplant seedlings into your garden.
1-7. Prepare the soil. Your hard work and careful transplanting of excellent seedlings might turn out counter to your vision if the soil has been maintained at a C-student level.
- Fine tune the well-prepared soil. Lettuce requirements are different from those of tomatoes or peanuts. Here at NMIT, we vary soil amendments accordingly.
- Choose seedlings mature enough to handle the journey – not too small, not too leggy, with good attitudes and they whistle while they work.
- Follow the procedure explained below (or listen to anyone who knows more than we do at NMIT).
During our busy transplant day, the professor of Logistics and Fertilizer decried supply chain issues and a funding shortage as the reason a few beds were not ready for transplanting. Nevertheless, after a wee bit of weeding and listening to the spring birdsong, the faculty transplanted tomato, cucumber and melon seedlings into freshly prepared beds.
Tomato seedlings eager to see beyond the greenhouse door almost carried themselves to the site. At the institute, we trowel a hole deeper than a seedling might require. Then we gently use a spoon to noodle the seedling out of its plastic pot, tofu tub or beer box and position it against the side of the hole. We then fill in the rest of the hole with whatever special soil mix is available. That’s the best-case scenario.
Sometimes, seedlings in the greenhouse sprout in clumps because seeds were planted in gobs, not separately. We recommend you prepare the destination ahead of time, then spoon out the whole gob and place it on a safe surface where you can gingerly disentangle the seedlings. Carefully massage the clump until the seedlings separate. These seedlings, now in limbo, respectfully ask the transplanter to calmly focus. Handle each seedling by a leaf, not the stem, and lower it into its destination. Press soil firmly, smile, add water. Check on it later.
In a windy area like NMIT, we protect young transplants by covering them with hats for a couple of days to settle them in. Plastic juice containers cut in half are what we call hats.
During the transplant process, NMIT recommends you trim long roots a bit so the plant can develop a stronger root system. Also loosen compacted root-bound soil because it’s terrible to be root-bound. I don’t want to be root-bound, and neither do plants.
Also, transplanting seedlings is an opportunity to create an ongoing art project you get to appreciate and refine all season. Are you classical or Dadaist?