![]() ![]() One of the best investments I have made was buying a soil thermometer. A topic to come!! I’m a stickler when it comes to watering and constantly keeping an eye on the soil temperature. Once you find the right ratios, stick with it and write it down! This can be the most troublesome part of starting seedlings indoors as well as watering outdoors. This is where trial and error comes in Garden Soldiers!! You can do it! Be vigilent of how much you are watering. After that I’ll go ahead and use the teaspoon/gallon ratio and only water enough so that the soil is moist and not soggy. So naturally, I half that amount for the first month. My bottle of fish emulsion calls for 1 tsp in a gallon of water. For the first month, I dilute the formula since the seedlings are so young. You can also use a seaweed based fertilizer. It’s a natural based plant food and one that you should be able to find at a local nursery. In order to keep these babies organic, I feed my seedlings a fish emulsion every other week. Now that the plants have 2 true sets of leaves, it’s time to start fertilizing the young seedlings. You can definitely tell the difference between the cotelydon leaves which nourished and fed the seedling to the plants actual true set of leaves and the onset of photosynthesis. I followed the advice and as you can see from the images above, the seedlings have grown with 2 true sets of leaves. Last year, I actually posted a video of someone starting their seedlings in this same way to utilize the concept of developing more roots for a stronger plant. If you have ever bought tomato plants from the nursery, they always instruct to plant the entire plant leaving only 2 inches above ground. The stem of the tomato plant can be planted deep within the dirt and will start to form new roots encouraging a stronger plant and root system. Tomato plants are a bit different than most other vegetables. For all of my other seedlings, I start them in small peat pots and as they get bigger, I transplant them to a larger peat pot giving them room to grow more before I transplant them outside. This year I actually started my tomato plants in a larger peat pot with only a small amount of dirt on the bottom. I know, it was a bit bouncy, lol!! If you have any questions on watering, leave me a comment or send me an email.
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