Welcome to my Driveway!

[nctomatoman]

So, I can transplant about 100-150 seedlings per hour into 4 inch pots...started about 4 weeks ago.

Current view of my driveway -



Close up of a few flats of tomatoes -



Where I spend most evenings these days -



First Saturday at the market nearly here!

[DonnaMarieNJ]

My seedlings look like strands of spaghetti with hair

And I have only about 50!!!!!

<sigh>

[DonnaMarieNJ]

Yours are so beautiful (as most of the seedlings pictured on this site are)!!!!!!

I am green with envy......

[nctomatoman]

You should have seen them a few weeks ago! It takes patience (time!) and warmth, but they get there. Once they "get going" and adapt to their new home (the 4 inch pot), they really take off.

[Miss_Mudcat]

Hi Craig,

Amazing! (But now I can sympathize! A little...)

Spent my first day transplanting my densely planted seedling to 4" pots. First fiasco of the day - the "daisy trays" won't hold 15 4" pots, only 10! Anyway.... we got over 500 transplanted. It took us about 8 hours BUT, we also had to take care of 8 children - 2 meals and 2 snacktimes! (My garden partner and I both have 4 children and homeschool - so that adds a totally new dimension to "spending the day transplanting"! ) All ages took turns helping and it was fun actually.... AND I don't think we killed a single one! I had only 2 regular leafs or potato leafs show up in wrong places, so all in all, it was a good day! We potted the smaller ones together, as you advised, so we will get to those when we begin the peppers and eggplants.

I wanted to say thank you again for taking the time to share your creation, experience, pictures, etc., for us, in particular, stay-at-home moms. We are looking forward to a successful market year (beginning in 4 weeks) thanks to your inspiration!

We hope you have a great market too!

Lisa

[Reign]

100-150/hr. I can't even do 50 in an hour.

I hope they all find loving homes.

[JBinKC]

I might be able to do 18 in an hour hehehe if you saw my seedling pics you know my husband accused me of Spoon feeding them this morning <LOL>

I better tell him not to complain or he might lose his driveway/garage to Tomatoes next year hehehe.

They look absolutely, positivily, gorgeoues Craig!

[jerseyjohn61]

Craig,

A Five Point Shot Perimeter you've set up in that
driveway. Does anyone ever use that backboard?
....JJ61

[mdvpc]

Craig-That is a lot of tomato plants! Obviously, they survived the cold snap you had.

[Goddessemer6]

holy cow! You've got a minature forrest of tomatoes!!!

[owiebrain]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

So, I can transplant about 100-150 seedlings per hour into 4 inch pots...started about 4 weeks ago.

I *really* need to know how you do them so quickly! I've hung (lurked) around GW for years and have never seen you post your secret. I'm sure I've seen pics of the potting up process for you but I'll be danged if I've ever seen anything that explains how you do it so quickly.

So, 'fess up because I wanna be just like you when I grow up!

Signed,

One Who Has Spent Most of Her Recent Waking Hours in the Greenhouse Potting Up Several Hundred Plants and Still Has Several Hundred More to Go

[moucheur]

Hey Craig, where can you buy modest quantities of those 6- or 8-cell flats and the little plastic variety markers? I have to beg them from my local nursery. They don't mind giving me a few, but asking for a couple dozen becomes a bit presumptuous, and wholesalers typically deal in much bigger volumes than that.

[nctomatoman]

Some answers:

Diane - how can I transplant so quickly? Here is the step by step:

I have an open bag of MetroMix, an open box of 4 inch pots, a gallon jug of water with my watering can, labels and a pen all close by.

First I get a stack of pots, then fill them with dry MetroMix - for a plug of seedlings, I line up 16 pots - 15 for the biggest seedlings that go into the flat, and one pot for the runts which get planted all together till they grow up and then get their own pot! That activity takes probably 2 seconds per pot, or say, 1 minute max

So, I have 15 filled pots all right there...I take my index finger and poke a hole in the center of each pot. This takes less than a minute.

I pop out my cell of seedlings and work them apart - I am not too gentle (ask Lee, he saw me do it) - I take the largest 15 and lay them on the 15 pots with the holes. That takes 1-2 minutes, depending upon how tangled the roots are.

I then ease each plant into the hole with my thumb and shake the pot to bring the dry mix around the base of each plant. That takes less than one minute to do all 15 pots.

I then take the runts and ease them all into the same pot - say another 2 mintues, depending upon how many runts.

I then water each pot from the top - 5 seconds per pot, so say 2 minutes.

I then put the labels in the pots, and the pots into the flat. If the labels are not done ahead, this adds 2 minutes.

So - for 16 pots, say 10 minutes on the average. For one hour, that adds up to around 100 pots. When I am really moving and have the labels already made out (My wife Sue does them during the day when I remember to tell her which I want written), I can get it down to 9 minutes for the 16 pots, which gets me closer to the 110-120 mark.

The other question on supplies - I don't know where to get modest supplies of anything! Since we sell seedlings, we can go to a commercial supplier, where we purchase the 5 inch plastic labels in boxes of 1000, and stacks of 50 of the mesh pot baskets. I am sure that buying in quantity reduces the price considerably, though increased gas prices has really driven up prices this year.

[Colorado_west]

Your plants sure look good. You leave those out side at night? Here I set out side and lug back in at night for awhile. My plants are not that good or that far along yet. I do not have any where near that many, just for my market garden. So not in individual pots. You put a name tag in each pot? That would take time. Do you do those markers ahead of time and have ready? I need to improve on things.

[Colorado_west]

Your reply came in while I was asking.