📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Seedling Space & Potting Up
- 🌱 The Potting Up Struggle: Transplanting seedlings from starter cells into half-liter (16 oz) cups takes hours of work and drastically increases the footprint of your grow operation.
- 📦 Direct to Large Pots? Growers often debate whether it’s better to bypass small cells entirely and sow seeds directly into large containers (like empty half-gallon milk cartons) to avoid the hassle of transplanting.
- 💡 Upcycling Containers: Running out of plastic nursery pots? Sturdy, foil-lined snack bags (like large sunflower seed or chip bags) make excellent, deep, repurposed pots for tomatoes.
- 🧊 Greenhouse Woes (Frost Heave): If your greenhouse doors are jammed or skewed in early spring, it is likely due to “frost heave”—the soil expanding and shifting as it freezes and thaws. It usually settles back into place once the ground fully thaws.
Yesterday I spent half the day potting up my spindly little tomato and pepper seedlings from their starter cups into 16 oz (half-liter) cups and repurposed foil snack bags. Maybe I should do what my friend does and just sow tomato seeds directly into empty milk cartons (I mean in terms of volume) one by one, so I don’t have to pot them up later?
I have absolutely no space left on my grow light shelf. I had to move all my flowers to a small table by the south-facing window with no supplemental lighting. And I still have cucumbers, melons, and zucchini coming up soon—where am I supposed to put everything?! Every year I tell myself I want to grow less, but I end up with a ton (though to be fair, my daughter and I are splitting this batch of seedlings between us).
I wish I could move the tomatoes out to the greenhouse already, but the door is completely skewed and jammed. You can see the ground has heaved up, there are huge gaps. Maybe once the snow melts completely, the soil will settle and it will snap back into place 🤷♀️
Russi (Anna) wrote:
Maybe I should do what my friend does and just sow tomato seeds directly into empty milk cartons…
Anya, your seedlings look great. They will be the perfect size right in time for planting out. Mine are about the same size, maybe just a tiny bit smaller. The tomatoes have really put on some serious growth in the sun over the last week. It’s time for me to pot them up into 16 oz (0.5 L) cups too. I’ll get to it tomorrow or the day after.
I have the exact same problem—no idea where to put them all. I could theoretically carry them out to the greenhouse during the day, but the path is covered in solid ice. The snow melts during the day and freezes into a sheet of ice by morning, it’s incredibly slippery to walk on. I’m going to wait until early April.
👨🔬 Editor’s Botanical Note: Should you sow tomato seeds directly into large pots (like milk cartons) to save time? While it saves you the labor of potting up, it is not recommended.
Tiny seedling roots cannot drink water fast enough from a large volume of soil. The excess soil stays soggy for too long, depriving the roots of oxygen and creating the perfect breeding ground for fungal diseases (like Damping Off) and fungus gnats. Potting up gradually (from a small cell to a medium cup, and then to the garden) forces the roots to create a dense, healthy rootball that properly utilizes all the moisture in its container!
