Since we’ve done a bit of transplanting, and will do much more, let’s talk about our strategies for the containers we’ll be transplanting into!
We do our germination in seeding trays, which means we need to transplant the seedling into a larger container. We try to time this for when the seedling has consumed the soil within the seeding tray, or shortly before, such that we get a good “plug.”
We transplant (or up-pot) into one of two containers sizes, either 606 Jumbo inserts or 3.5 inch pots. These pots certainly could be various sizes, yogurt containers and so on. But, as larger scale growers, one of our important goals is that all of our gear stores and fits well within a small space.
The overwhelming majority of our plants go into the 606 inserts, affectionately known as a six pack. We find the larger 606 great for almost all plants, it’s a nice “universal size” for us. Certainly, we could tune different insert sizes to specific plants. But, that means stocking and supporting more gear.
Our largest growing plants (e.g. tomatoes, peppers, perennials, etc.) are transplanted into the larger pots. Larger plants generally need more soil. In fact, these larger plants can often get so large that we need to up-pot them again before we can transplant outside!
We chose larger containers than are “technically” needed. The biggest benefit, to us, is this reduces our watering demands. Commercial growers have labor and time they can throw at this problem, we simply scale that same way as individual growers.
But, more importantly, larger containers (compared to say, commercial growers) also allow our plants to get physically larger. Not only does this get us closer to maturity, sooner, but it also translates to more substantial harvests!
