Potting Up

One of the numerous tasks we have every spring, “potting up” — or moving various seedlings from small pots, trays or cells into larger pots or cells — is done for a number of reasons: it gives the plants fresh soil (and, thus, nutrients) to use; it gives them more room, so they can grow larger while staying stout and sturdy and it lets us make more efficient use of potting mix and our precious greenhouse space because we can germinate many hundreds of plants in very compact trays and select only the best to spread out later into larger, roomier trays. It’s a very easy task, but one that takes a lot of time.

In the pictures below, you’ll see that we’re using soil blocks, which are just that: little blocks of soil. We germinate seeds in tiny 3/4″ blocks, which we later separate and plug into the larger 2″ blocks. Not only is it very geometrically satisfying, but it fulfills the strong urge to play with building blocks that we are so rarely able to express as adults. We finished potting up last week, with the bulk of it happening two weeks ago. These pictures were taken just after the plants were potted up and — though I have no pictures to prove it — the plants are already unrecognizably larger.