Hey guys, have a pic if my cherry tomatos which I recently transplanted.
Also, for anyone who'd like it, I created
Its meant to be what r/containergardening was
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Nature and Gardening
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It looks like you've got multiple tomatoes in each pot, I'd thin them to one per pot, lest they get crowded. You could also fill the pots further and bury the stems of the tomatoes, they'll sprout roots from the stem and be even hardier!
As for the separating of the plants, how could I do that without causing damage at this stage? Won't their roots be all tangled up and separating them cause them stress and damage?
Nope, they still look young enough to me to separate, and tomatoes can be surprisingly hardy. Even if say you managed to break every single root off, you could place the stem in a jar of water and it'll sprout new roots in a week or so. One way to easily clone a plant, or skip growing a new plant from seed is to clip and root a sucker.
Just carefully get them out of the pot (my favorite gentle method is putting fingers against the soil around the base of the cluster and then flipping the whole pot, but this tends to be messy), and then just gently massage the root ball to remove the dirt or swish in a bucket of water.
Though before you do that, I'd think about where you're going to plant the other seedlings. I see as many as 7 individual shoots in some of your pots, and a typical rule of thumb is each tomato wants a 5 gallon bucket of soil to itself. You can get away with with smaller containers (some determinate varieties will do fine, like this Orange Hat micro tomato), but it makes them much more sensitive to changes in moisture and nutrients. Personally, I wouldn't leave more than two max in the pots you've got.
If you don't have the space to spread out your seedlings, you might want to skip uprooting them and just snip the excess seedlings at the base. Or pull them up, and give the spares to friends!
I think what I'll go with is snipping them at the root base. Ive already got 10 pots, and a small balcony xD
Do you mind linking any guide on how to do that safely? Like, which stems to leave and which to cut, where to cut, etc...
Thanks
You're not to the point yet where you're looking to prune your plants, though that's definitely something you'll want to be doing later, to control their size in a small space. Just pick one or two seedlings in each pot that look the healthiest, and snip the stems of the rest right at the soil.
Thanks, ill do that!