I am waiting for my seed order to arrive and got bored and started to watch YouTube videos. Gardener Scott has many gardening videos and in a quite recent one he showed an experiment of comparing growth of tomato plants, which were treated differently as seedlings and planting.



He grew only one plant each way, so I am not sure if it is correct to make definite conclusions of the end result.

Since I have limited space indoors under lights, I have to start with small containers and move to bigger ones, when I can move the plants to the greenhouse. Usually by planting time the plants are so tall that I have to bury part of the stem in the soil. Based on his experiment I am doing it the wrong way.

Has anyone here done that kind of experiment and ended up to similar or maybe opposite conclusions as he had?

Sari

FWIW, I've always started mine in 3"/7.62cm pots under lights, with the only other action being them being planted outdoors.

Used to plant tomatoes indoors ~ March 5-10 (they ended up too leggy by planting time in my zone) to April 2nd (my Dear late Father's Birthday), which makes a quantifiable difference.

Just started burying any leggy stemmed seedlings deeper in 2022; everything I've ever read supports that.

The Gotch

i watched the video.

i am of the nature that there are multiple right ways of growing a tomato.
like many, i have limited indoor space available in which to start plants.
i usually sow multiple seeds in six cell plastic inserts. i transplant one time
to 8 or 9 oz cups that i drill holes in the bottom for drainage.
with proper water, light, and temp. they usually grow well until ready to plant out.
the big difference i have found when planting outside is the depth at which i plant.
if i plant too deep, the soil here in late spring/early summer is cooler, and that can set
the plants back, and sometimes they don't ever catch up. the plants seem to do better
when i plant them in shallow trenches. the soil is warmer, you get root growth along the
buried stem, and have a happy plant.

bottom line, i won't be making any major changes in starting my plants.


keith

Way down in the comments, there was one person who suggested that the depth of burying the stem could possibly have more of an effect on root growth than repotting vs none at all. But it does present a new way to do things and I may try that this year with a few seeds. But as was also mentioned, depending on the number of plants you have to start, bigger pots would take up a lot more space.

Because I grow tomatoes in containers, I plant really leggy ones to rectangular containers, so that the buried stem is sideways in soil. I do not change the potting mix every year and when I dig in before planting new ones, the horizontally buried stems have always a lot of roots on the whole length of the stem.

The burst of growth I see after each up pot is enough for me to continue transplanting practices.

I start in 50 cell ROUND plug seed flats, transplant to Solo cups and from there 1 gallon pots. Plants are hardened off and planted in the ground with flowers.

I only have enough room to fit my plants under lights in beer cups, until planting time. I do usually plant them as deep as I can, and by the end of season the 5 gallon pots are completely full of roots. I never had a plant that didn't root from the stem, right up to the soil surface.
I did change my practice slightly in recent years. I used to pot the sprouts into 9-cells (72/1020) and then wait for the second set of leaves to pot up into the cups. I tried just sowing a bit more sparsely and letting them get true leaves in the mass planting before transplant directly to cups. It made no difference that I could tell. That change was just for laziness value, to cut out some work.
I did once plant very small seedlings with a few true leaves directly into the final containers. These were started later, so the soil was warm enough but the plants were tiny compared to the ones started in cups, and they didn't seem to grow very fast. I thought they stayed small for a long time, but I did not have a 1:1 comparison with the same variety started the other way. Plants were healthy and productive when full grown, they just took longer.

I agree with Keith, that deep planting in cold soil is not a benefit. But shallow planting a long leggy stem is great. You can even grow a row of plants from one stem by that method in the ground.

I don't think the results in the video were very convincing. It seemed that the plant in the large pot had grown already a lot more than the others when they were potted up, so perhaps they would have done better in the potting soil instead of seed starting mix, or needed to be potted up sooner to grow as fast as the one in the bigger pot. ( I use bone meal mixed into the lower half of the cell or pot every time I pot up, and I do think that makes a difference to the roots. One time I forgot to mix it in, and I ended up with a mess of roots in the middle and nothing below. )
Either way, I don't think potting stress is a big factor, as long as the plant gets to develop good roots before planting.
WRT planting deeper or not, well that was a second factor in his experiment which makes it harder to judge results. There wasn't a big difference in the results anyway, but I do think it depends a lot on soil temperature and perhaps not so much on whether you potted up more at seedling stage.

I just watched that video yesterday!! Was looking for a new content on vegetables haha

AKgardener wrote: ↑Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:18 pm I just watched that video yesterday!! Was looking for a new content on vegetables haha

This is the time to start watching the gardening videos, when we this far north do still have snow covering our gardens.

Bower has a good point about that seed starting mix. That guy said that the mix was peat, coir and perlite, but did not mention how was it fertilized. That first plant looks like it could have needed a bit more nitrogen.
I use same potting mix for seed starting and potting, if I do not start the seeds in DE granules. I do also use weak fertilizer solution when watering.

I will not change my seed starting and transplanting based on that video, but this year I will start my tomatoes a bit later than previous years. If the seeds I ordered from Germany will arrive in mail today, I will be just a week late, but I am afraid that it will take an other week or two. Dockworkers and truck drivers in Finland were on strike and it has delayed mail and it takes some time for them to clear the backlog.

It is hard to draw conclusions. Only one plant for each condition. It is easy to get different results just with a different seed. I usually loosen the roots on the outside of the root ball and he doesn't seem to do that.

I think the soil and growing conditions after planting in the final destination will be the best way to get a good root structure. Any deficit as long as the plant is heathy would quickly be made up once planted in the garden.

My first choice would be to direct sew in the garden but growing season and weather and care for the tiny seedlings make that difficult. I think that's the best way to get a good tap root. I have had volunteers that have done well.

I have started a few early tomatoes in indoor pots under grow lights. I plan on direct sewing the same in a couple of containers. I will have the option of replacing the direct sew with starts depending on which looks better.

Next in line would be my five inch x six inch deep round pots. I often don't get my timing right so the bigger pot gives me more time without having to pot up. Six inches deep also gives some room for a tap root. Unfortunately I have limited indoor space so that pretty much rules out the five inch pots except for off times.

I also have three and four inch pots but space also becomes an issue with these. That leaves my go to two inch square x three inch deep pots for production numbers.

Depending on my timing the starts in the two inch pots can go directly to the garden or the container garden.

If it is early season, the soil is damp and the ground is cold I don't plant deep. I want the roots in the warmer soil. If the plant is tall and spindly I will plant deep enough to support the stem.

As the weather warms and the soil dries out I will plant several inches deep to get to damper soil.

rxkeith wrote: ↑Thu Mar 02, 2023 9:13 am i watched the video.

i am of the nature that there are multiple right ways of growing a tomato.
like many, i have limited indoor space available in which to start plants.
i usually sow multiple seeds in six cell plastic inserts. i transplant one time
to 8 or 9 oz cups that i drill holes in the bottom for drainage.
with proper water, light, and temp. they usually grow well until ready to plant out.
the big difference i have found when planting outside is the depth at which i plant.
if i plant too deep, the soil here in late spring/early summer is cooler, and that can set
the plants back, and sometimes they don't ever catch up. the plants seem to do better
when i plant them in shallow trenches. the soil is warmer, you get root growth along the
buried stem, and have a happy plant.

bottom line, i won't be making any major changes in starting my plants.


keith

If possible, pick successive sunny warm days to transplant. Especially with peppers, but tomatoes and other things too, dig the planting hole a day early, and spread that dug soil around fairly thin. The next day, if transplanting later in the day, the soil that will be going back in, can be much warmer than what was dug out.

@Tormato that is the best advice ever for transplanting. Fusion Power advised me to look for a forecast of three days of 'happy tomato' weather in a row. This gives them a couple of days to get over the transplant stress without having to handle cold stress at the same time. It works like a charm.

yes, good advice gary.

key thing is successive warm sunny days.
ever been in da U.P. during early june?
the weather here can still be erratic the first two weeks of june.
more often than not, i can plant during a warmer stretch, that is immediately followed
by four or five days of rain with temps in the high 40s or low 50s. same thing when i try to
get the pole beans in. drives ya nuts. the beans , i start a few in doors to hedge my bets.


keith

I definitely still have snow on the ground and I have only used containers for my tomatoes because they go in a pop us greenhouse! This year I won’t be using my big garden bed since the top soil that was delivered it way to dense and I have to remove mist of it and add peet to it and let it sit for the summer! I’m doing everything in large barrels for tomatoes!! And I just started one variety cause my Siberian never germinated so I’m waiting on new seeds !! I’m obsessed with videos right now haha

Growing advice on youtube, that broadcasts to the entire globe...the big thing for me is, WHERE is this grower and WHAT type of soil/medium. I want to know that before I take the time to watch. If those two criteria are similar to me, then, the next important thing, was there a real scientific method. For this one, three strikes. I have no idea where, he's using tall beds like that is strongly dissimilar, and there was almost no science.

In the video opening there is a title eluding to historic CHANGE and in the first minute it is revealed that the conclusions supporting the historic CHANGE is based on just 5 seeds, and a single six and a half month period. Besides the minute sample size, there are multiple variables introduced at each stage. To list a few, in 2 and 3 he grew twins and selected the biggest! With 1, he used different starting mix. Upon plant out, "plant 1" is buried yet another time, but not the others? Oh heck, why not one final huge variable, I guess.

The only constants were seed source and germination start date.

Oh by the way, we had bad weather that delayed plant out, but "it didn't really hurt the plants much". (yeah, the weather must not have mattered, they all got some tomatoes! the late start could not have possibly affected the production differently between plants that had a smaller, developed root system versus the eventually larger adventious root system!)

What were the results, anyway? The tomatoes were not graded, counted, weighed? No time frame of production, other than the plant on right, the one that got a big pot (most space and resources) from the start and won its binary selection for size had the earliest fruit. Duh!? It is also on the east(ish) side, no? The sun was in his face, mid-day, so East is on the right, yes? East should win first to flower. Double Duh!? With only 18" of space, the middle is going to lag behind either east or west exposure. You don't need a video of a sixth month test to support common sense.

To me, this is information possibly worthy of a forum thread, inviting other forum members to comment or give ideas. Not for manufacturing a 15 minute video. But, have t-shirt, must post video, seems to be the new normal. Oh and please tell others to watch my video! I want money! Cameras aren't cheap!

Clearly, I am not as diplomatic as some here. I stay off of youtube for the most part, so I tend to react when I see that stuff brought on to web forums. I have much more faith in the knowledge generated and shared here than I do by those that try to garner a following on camera to hopefully, eventually, get their stuff monetized. I don't believe the most knowledgable people about subjects have the inclination to make videos. People that want to make videos, they are the ones that make videos.

This is the statement he starts out with:

"For years I've started tomatoes from seed and put them in my garden with the understanding that the more often I can transplant the seedling the better root development I'll have and the bigger the plant will be the idea being that a tomato plant can grow roots all the way along the stem."

And he basically says that #1 is his control group for this is the way he typically plants. Now, I don't know where he came up with that, but I would NEVER plant a huge plant that way, and if someone does, fine, but the person should not be making videos about gardening. They should be reading about it. At the end he actually states that the plant was wasting energy growing more roots... It goes back to two ears and one mouth, to be used in proportion.

This is what adventious roots looked like Nov 1st clean up last year. A lot broke off, still pencil thickness, after 3 ft running under ground. Compare that to those little root balls in that video. Put the video camera down, I say.

The one on the right has multiple 5 ft roots still attached. These were from 8"-10" tall plants trenched in and is all nutrition uptake at the warm surface dirt while interplanted with cantaloupe and right next to spring snap peas that I snipped off in mid June. In the good dirt in PA. I'm not saying it will work in Texas or Alaska but that is the way for here.

You nailed it, JR. Too many variables, too many sources of error, tiny sample, no metrics.
Nice roots, btw.

Interesting video but the only conclusion to me is that vegetables are super plastic to different conditions, which we already know.

Hope he repeats the experiment next year

rxkeith wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 11:11 am yes, good advice gary.

key thing is successive warm sunny days.
ever been in da U.P. during early june?
the weather here can still be erratic the first two weeks of june.
more often than not, i can plant during a warmer stretch, that is immediately followed
by four or five days of rain with temps in the high 40s or low 50s. same thing when i try to
get the pole beans in. drives ya nuts. the beans , i start a few in doors to hedge my bets.


keith

OK, for you YOOPERS, make it one sunny day.

Dig holes, spread out diggings thin on blacktop driveway, cover with black plastic, hide from wife, come back after she's tired of running around with cast iron skillet, transplant tomatoes, take off black plastic, fill holes with warmer soil.