Well, we’ve potted up our tomatoes and peppers into larger 5.5 inch pots! So, let’s talk about why we do this, the benefits we see and what our general goals are!
This effort is about flexibility. We still have about a month to go to our last frost. If you’ve been around northern gardens, you know that last frost is a suggestion and not an absolute. More soil buys us time and flexibility that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
Plants grown in containers are inherently restricted, in water, nutrition and physical space. You have two choices with root bound plants, either pot them up or provide regular infusions of fertilizer to keep plant growth relatively linear. More soil means the plants can become physically larger, with ease.
But, more importantly, it also means that we have to water these plants less frequently. With over a thousand plants in flight, anything we can do to reduce our labor is a good thing. When tomatoes and peppers don’t have enough soil and water, frequent and time consuming care is the only solution.
You might see this practice lies in contrast to commercial growers that don’t do this. Commercial growers have labor they can throw at the problem, we do not. Not to mention, as smaller growers, we can choose to provide a premium, luxury experience for our plants. The commercial grower constantly has to trade input costs, whereas we can solve the problem correctly.
This effort is not free, soil has a very real input cost. We’ve carefully measured this practice against benefit, determining its worth in our practice. It might not be worth it to everyone. Perhaps you have more time or perhaps maximum plant growth and harvests aren’t your goal.
If you’re questioning whether the plants will actually use all this extra soil? The answer is, absolutely. Doing this up-pot about a month to last frost allows a complete and full consumption of the extra space by the roots. We get massive tomato and pepper “plugs” to transplant.
Lastly, you might wonder why we don’t just do this as the initial transplant step? The reason is we just don’t have room within our indoor grow rooms. These pots only give us eight plants per 1020 tray. We can only do this once the majority of our plants are out in our semi-heated greenhouse!
Oh, and thank you everyone for the incredible response to our season introduction post yesterday. You all are amazing, we couldn’t have done any of this without you. Truly, thank you for all your support!
