What Became of My First Tomato Crop

In the last entry where we saw my very first tomato crop, germinations happened five days after I planted the seeds.

More seedlings continued to sprout the following day (the visual change just over overnight never fails to amaze me).

Amidst the joy however, it soon became apparent that most of the seedlings looked rather spindly and weak-looking. They didn’t look healthy at all:

I even stuck wooden skewers into the soil, beside the weakest looking seedlings. I did this because many of them were lying horizontally on the soil:

It seemed like the right thing to do, as I remember reading that the stems of tomato plants can be weak, and require support.

Sticking in the skewers didn’t help very much though. Firstly, it wasn’t practical to have one skewer for every seedling. I could only choose to plant skewers beside as many ‘lazy’ seedlings as possible. Secondly, there was no way to keep the seedlings leaning on the skewers. I’d prop them up against the skewers, but every morning they’d lean and stretch away from the skewers and toward the sun. That’s great, except that many of them end up frozen in that steep leaning position, which is perfect for being bombarded back onto the soil when they are being watered. There are two reasons why this was possible. Firstly, my dad insists on helping with the watering every morning. Which is great, except he uses a hose. Yes, a hose. On 6-day old seedlings. On days when I convince him to NOT to hose them, I’d water them personally, using a watering can that was missing a shower cap on the spout. No good reason, I know, but I just took that long to go get a one with a shower cap. During this time, I made do by manually dissipating the water with my free hand before it fell on the seedlings. Neither of these were obviously good ideas, so most of the poor tomato seedlings kept being battered down onto the soil bed every day, save for two or three stronger ones.

Then I read and learnt that tomato seedlings should be transfered into bigger pots when their first true leaves form, and get to lengths of about half-inch long. The leaves on mine looked like they were growing steadily (despite the weak form), so I continued with the brutal watering regime. On hindsight, it was dumb, yes, but I figured that I would transfer them soon, and they looked like they’ll survive till the day.

The day, I decided, came about a week later, on Day 14. Here’s where things got dumber still.

In my infinite newbie wisdom, I dug up all my tomato seedlings, intending to lay them out in a row to find the strongest-looking ones. Growing tomato plants need lots of space to themselves, so i wanted to select the most promising few. Problem was, I really DUG them up. As in, UPROOT.

Big, stupid mistake. But It didn’t occur to me at that moment.

I went happily about the process, being careful to hold the seedlings by their stems (not the leaves, ‘coz I’m obviously a pro) as I loosed the soil around their bases.

Proudly, I laid them out in a row, and proceeded to poke and pick, scrutinizing with the raised brow of a grower with pride.

Finally, I discerned six seedlings worthy of new homes and my continued expert care. I placed them, three by three, into a pot and a transparent tupperware box (there’s a reason why I experimented with this, which I’ll share at the end of this post). I felt real sad about letting go of the others, but I had to shoot for the highest standards. I buried them as fertilizer under their six selected siblings, so that they may all live on in a different form.

I recycled the soil which they shared as seeds, and split them among the pot and the tupperware. You may remember this as the old soil that was offered to me by my mom. As I poured it out and stirred it around, I realized that it was of the clay variety (yes, I had since been reading up in the library too). Real sticky and chunky. I was no expert yet, but I did wonder to myself if it felt anything like a tender, fragile seedling would be comfortable in.

I buried each seedling as deep as it could go without its leaves touching the soil bed. I did this right (again, reasons at the end of this post).

After the transfers were done, a few of the seedlings started looking droopy:

My mom explained that most young leafed plants exhibit this behavior, when they experience trauma – in this case, the uprooting. They should prop up later, if they survive the re-potting. I watered the two pots gently and proceeded to wait.

Four hours later, they didn’t prop up. In fact, they looked worse then before:

In bed that night, I prayed hard that at least one pot would survive. The next morning, each one of the seedlings looked dead or done for. All the leaves were shriveled. The best one of the lot looked like this:

The soil looked like shit too – the surface looked dry and rocky; very apt accompaniment to the shriveled leaves.

It was official. My first batch of tomato plants were dead.

DEAD!

Can’t believe it. I killed them all.

Learning Points:

1) When re-potting seedlings from nursery pots to bigger pots, do not traumatize the roots area, i.e. DO NOT UPROOT them. This is the reason why we commonly see seedlings being re-potted with a clump of their original soil still covering their roots.

2) There are generally six soil types – sandy, silty, clay, loamy, chalky and peaty. Clay soil do not a comfy bed make, at least not for tomato seedlings. To keep things simple, I’m going to try organic potting soil, which is of a peaty consistency. The said organic materials can consist of a mixture of anything from peat moss, decomposed plant material, to manure (usually cow or sheep), or anything else organic, dead and biodegradable.

3) When re-potting a tomato seedling, bury it deeper than before, but only as deep as it can go without its leaves touching the soil bed. The former action encourages the tiny hairs on its stem to grow into more roots, which will make the plant more stable when it matures (tomato plants naturally need to lean, though not creep, as what I formerly thought). The latter prevents the leaves from rotting when they get wet from watering and stick to the soil bed.

4) I decided to experiment with a transparent tupperware box after experience with the first kangkong and parsley crops, which were grown in big styrofoam boxes. At the seed / newly germinated stage, the angled morning and evening sun rays could not reach the ones along the edges of the boxes, because of how high they were. Only those in the center got some good sun. It didn’t get better in the middle of the day either, when the sun was shining straight down. This was because there was no spot along my corridor to catch such sun. The only thing I could possibly do was to erect a big platform on the balcony that would either hang ten storeys over the streets below or block half the walkway for my neighbors. Thus, I had the idea of splitting my crops into smaller boxes which could sit snugly on the balcony. To further eliminate any issues of lack of sunlight, the box will be transparent.

5) I should use common sense: water fragile young seedlings using a spritzer bottle.