You’ve done the the hard work of starting your garden from seed, you’ve babied them and watched them grow and now they’re getting too big for the seedling trays!! What’s next? If it’s still too cold to plant them outside, it’s time to Transplant! Let’s take those seedlings and transplant them into a bigger pot with room to grow.

To start, collect the supplies you’ll need:

Organic Potting Soil
- If you do not have a potting bench to work on you can use a large plastic tote to keep from making a royal mess. Pour your potting soil into the tote and work in and over the tote as you transplant the seedlings into their new pots. I show how I contain the mess in the video!
4 - 10 inch pots - you will want 1 pot for each seedling
- if you’re transplanting tomatoes I suggest using a 10 inch pot so that you will have ample space to bury the stem (see the video for more on this!) as well as for it to continue growing.
Plant Tags + Pen: popsicle sticks or recycled plastic containers will work

Why Transplant?

Transplanting gives the plants a larger space to continue to grow and establish it’s root system, plus it allows you to seperate seedlings that have sprouted in the same pod. Not all seedlings need to be transplanted. If you’ve started cilantro or mixed greens, or annual flowers, they can easily be hardened off and planted directly into the garden. I specifically transplant Tomatoes, Peppers, Basil and Perennial Flowers that we are growing for the flower garden. Once transplanted, we place the plants back under the grow light and allow them to continue growing until the weather is warm enough or the plant is big enough to withstand being moved out into the garden.

For Tomatoes, Peppers and Basil, we keep them growing inside until mid May when they are hardened off and planted into the garden beds.

For Garden Flowers like lavender, echinaccea and rudbeckia, we keep them in their pots until they are roughly 5 inches tall and have a strong base of shoots/leaves growing. Once they’ve reached this size they’re big enough to hold their own in the flower garden!

Transplanting is worth all of the additional work to give your plants the best chance at being strong and healthy before they enter the big wide world of the garden! Pretty soon those baby plants will be producing bushels of tomatoes and bundles of blooms!