Transplants Much Taller Than Planned - What To Do?

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by oakley

I would consider your soil temp and quality. New prepared plot or what was there in the
past, how loose it is, what depth it is cold hard clay, if so.
We are similar climate and soil maybe. My soil is warm now and covered having tended
to that chore last Fall.
My early starts are tall and i'll start some next weekend using a modified trenching.
A foot or so at an angle towards the center of my beds. Too deep and my soil is cold and
wet. I started trenching years ago for the same reasons Carolyn did. I'm guessing i
learned this from her as i was reading articles from publications that she was writing
for. It immediately made sense for my soil and climate. And having to wait for good
weather to plant out.
I would take the time, and not that much really, to take some, maybe 10% and trench.
It is worth the trial side-by-side.

Congrats on the tunnel! Many here doing the same. You should get some immediate
results once in the ground with the extra heat. Those growers will have good advice.

Thanks oakley! We're very lucky and feel very proud to be given the opportunity to work with such a generous grant. We'll try to put it to good use!

Our soil is a fine sandy loam, with a fair amount of clay, just enough to provide a nice exchange capacity without impeding drainage. We really love growing in it. This year we splurged and bought a Land Pride 5' reverse tine gear-driven tiller for our compact tractor and man, does that thing dig deep! It is such a joy to work in with a hoe, making digging up beds by hand a breeze compared to previous seasons. Our soil is about 60F about 6 inches deep, depending where we shoot with the IR thermometer. And with the probe poked even deeper it's still around 55F. The Cornell tomato expert gave us the green light at temps over 50F to get them in the ground so we are going for it! We have some agribon to drape over them if it comes to it, but it is looking like warm weather for the next couple of weeks!

This trenching and laying down makes a lot of sense. I'm considering it more and more!

Thanks

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by KarenO

I think they look great, just get them in as soon as possible.
KarenO

Will do! Thanks!

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by jtjmartin

If you do trench any, lay them over on their sides for a few hours. The tips will bend up to the sun and are a lot less likely to break. (Credit to whoever posted this tip earlier in the year. It works!)

I saw a video on youtube suggesting exactly this. Wouldn't be at all surprised if he got that advice here. (Don''t remember who posted it now.) It's a bit overcast today, and I don't want to wait too long to get them planted. But I also don't want to bend them too hard and risk snapping/creasing any. That's my only hang up with laying them down. If we made that decision days ago and had some sun to take advantage of and allow them to grow upward I wouldn't think twice about it! Still, it's worth considering. Hmmm...

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by Worth1

What you did is a common mistake made by many and myself included.
That is letting them grow too close together in the trays.
They needed distance apart from each other.
Those same plants would not look like that if they were grown a foot apart from each other even in the same containers.
It is the same as a dog hair thicket in a forest that isn't managed properly.
Everything is stretching for sunlight and not spreading out.

Worth

You're so right! And it's precisely what we had hoped to avoid. Unfortunately, we tried to get a jump on the competition (just a couple miles up the road from us and with higher traffic) and started our tomatoes earlier this year. We bought beautiful new T5HO 8 lamp fixtures, 6500K bulbs, and got them off to a great start. Then they needed sun so we built the little nursery you see in the pics above. That was only supposed to house them til about a month ago when we had hoped we would have the tunnel up and the ground tilled. Suffice to say, this has been a tough spring. Machinery breaking down, newly purchased machinery not set up properly by the folks we bought it from, almost incessant rain, cold snaps after cold snaps... just a mess. So they ended up in that nursery without adequate space to spread them out until now when they have a warm, enclosed environment to move into. At the end of this season we are investing in heat for the new tunnel. Next year we will have our pots in there and continually space them out so they don't overshadow each other. It's a little heartbreaking, considering if we got them in when we wanted to they would have been perfect! Oh well, we are still expecting WAY more tomatoes than we've ever seen before!

thanks worth!

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by Jimbotomateo

So wonderful to have the best growersin the world for advice! Your projects are exciting to see Antho. I'm following.

You're not kidding! I've been following this forum for a little while no before becoming a member and getting activated and I'm so thrilled to have some of the heavy hitters here to share their advice and support! Such a great community. Very happy to be here.

Thanks for the kind words!

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

The ones I am planting look even more over-grown. Part of my greenhouse looks like a melon patch right now. I used Osmocote Plus instead of Osmocote flower and vegetable, which was a mistake. The plus has minors and higher nitrogen. My stuff grew too fast and a lot of it fell over. All I am doing differently is carefully tying up each plant as I put it in the ground so the wind doesn't break it off.

Ah yes, ours aren't too vegetative necessarily, just leggy from trying to reach for sun as Worth pointed out. We are not adding any nitrogen at transplant right now. We have 7% organic matter in our soil so we are just adding some potash, eggshells and epsom salts for now. Want to keep these in generative mode!

Good luck this season

[Worth1]

Everything does look great and good job.
What I did with mine was to take them out of the small containers the same size as yours and put them in bigger containers.
I took the container off and put the plant in the bottom of the big container took off the lower leaves and buried them up to their necks.
In a few short days they exploded and you would have never known they were leggy.

Worth

[anthocyanic]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Everything does look great and good job.
What I did with mine was to take them out of the small containers the same size as yours and put them in bigger containers.
I took the container off and put the plant in the bottom of the big container took off the lower leaves and buried them up to their necks.
In a few short days they exploded and you would have never known they were leggy.

Worth

Excellent! Thanks again