After school, the weather played ball long enough for us to get outside and tick off a few small jobs. We've got lots of seedlings that are ready to be transplanted into larger pots - mainly tomatoes, cucumber, and zucchini so we made a start on this.
While Luke soaked the seedlings in seaweed tonic, we talked about how it helps to prevent the seedlings from going into shock when we transplant them. He used the watering can, with the seaweed tonic added to fill the bottom of our 60L containers (also known as a peasant's greenhouse haha). I went over the benefits of watering this way in general e.g. it helps to encourage the roots to grow down further and enables us to avoid wetting the leaves while watering.
Once the seedlings had finished soaking in the seaweed tonic we began transplanting them into larger pots. Luke did the plants he's using for his own two gardens and I finished off the rest. Instead of buying new plastic pots, we're reusing what we have at home for now. They were then individually labelled.
I explained to him why I use a fork to help prick the seedlings out and how it's important to disturb the roots as little as possible. When it came to repotting Luke's Indigo Blueberry Tomato seedling, I showed him how to plant the seedling in the new pot up to its first set of leaves. This helps the tomato to develop a better root system.
Tonight I also managed to sow a final row of sweet pea seeds underneath the trellis along the back deck. We already have seedlings there so these will be extras for later on in early summer. Luke gave his strawberries in the pots a feed of fish and seaweed, planted some sweetcorn seeds, as well as topping up his potato bag. We'll also direct sow additional sweetcorn seeds around Labour Weekend.
I find small and often works well with young children in the garden. He finished off by picking a couple of carrots out of his gardens - one of his favourite vegetables. We used the Yates seed tape. I highly recommend it! From memory, we used Manchester Table Carrots and Baby Carrots. We've had great success this year with carrots, which is new for me.
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