Planting Transplants

The weather has finally gotten warm enough to plant warm weather crops. On our shortlist, that's beans, tomatoes, basil, and nasturtiums. In fact, warm and moist like this is ideal.

The only problem is that the soil is pretty wet from all the rain we've had already. If it's too muddy, it sticks together and to your trowel, and it's hard to get things planted well, so you should try digging a bit to see how your soil is. If it's already got lots of compost in it, it may be fine after just a few hours of warm, rain-free weather. Otherwise, you need to wait: keep checking and seize the soil is no longer too muddy.

It's best to soak beans overnight or even for 24 hours before you plant them, since they will germinate much faster that way.

The others on this list: tomatoes, basil, and nasturtiums are usually planted as seedlings rather than as seed. In principal, they can be grown from seed in the garden now, too. If you do that, you should know that they may take a while to sprout, and also they are quite slow growing at first and often get eaten by slugs or snails when they are tiny. So you should plant a few extra seeds in place and then thin out later.

But if you are following the usual practice...

Transplanting Seedlings

Dig a hole that fits the pot the seedling is in, but is deeper.

Add some compost (if you didn't just prepare the soil with compost this year) and try to losen and mix the dirt that will be surrounding and beneath your seedling. This makes it easier for the seedling to grow its roots, which will be quite deep and wide in most cases.

Carefully remove the seedling from the pot, with as little stress on any part of the plant as you can manage. It often helps to tear the thin plastic of a nursury pot away from the earth and roots in the pot. You are trying to disturb its roots as little as possible, since the roots are very fragile. The actual root hairs that absorb water are microscopic. The more you damage those, the less water and nutrients the seedling will get after planting until it regrows them.

Stressing the seedling and its roots as little as possible, lower the roots into the hole with one hand, and use the other to fill in earth beneath it and around it. Press down gently to firm up the earth it's now planted in.

Ideally, the plant ends up in a very slight depression, making it easy to water. Water by filling the depression with a cup or so of water, so you can see that as the water soaks in, the earth surrounding the seedling is well wetted, but not soupy.

For most plants, you should take care when transplanting not to add any extra earth around the stem of the seedling, which might rot it. Tomatoes are an exception to this: plant them deeper when you transplant them, as deep as the first set of leaves. They will grow additional roots from the submerged part of the stem, making for a stronger, healthier plant later.

You should make sure that the plants have slightly moist soil at all times for at least a few days, while they regenerate their roots. Looking at the weather forecast, that should be pretty effortless.