Potting On Tomatoes

I was hoping that the tomatoes may not need potting up before the threat of a frost was behind us. In the South East of England my last frost date is the end of April, last night the temperatures were down to 2 degrees C in the space saver and my tomatoes came into the house for the evening. 

I decided that today the 15 tallest of the seedlings should be potted on into vending machine cups and placed in a 3 x 5 (15) Module seed tray. 

The root systems of all those that I potted up were well formed for such young plants. Using my small finger I managed to push up the seedlings plug. Each tomato was planted at depth such that the top of the compost came up to the seedling leaves. 

Here was the result once the tallest had been potted on. The vending machine cups have two holes melted in the bottoms using a soldering iron and I wash and reuse the cups each year. 

The tomatoes were returned to the Norfolk Space Saver greenhouse for the remainder of the day. The forecast is for a low of 5C at approximately 5am tomorrow morning so the potted up tomatoes will be covered with a mushroom tray covered in bubblewrap and their younger more delicate brothers will once again come in for the night returning to the greenhouse as the temperature reach around 10 degrees C. 

The Radish in the left of the photo look well enough advanced to be placed into deeper trays for growing on to maturity. Radish is something that our local small Tesco does not seem to be carrying in stock since before the lock down.