I’ve always thought that almost nothing in the edible plant world is more fun to grow, sell, and eat than tomatoes. So when I took up farming, I went nuts growing tomato plants. Still do.
I soon learned that starting seedlings by the thousands requires a whole new way of operating, and space in my makeshift basement growing room—no surprise—was finite, as were my time and my budget. I resorted to a solution that seemed to solve all these issues at once: 2-inch peat pots, in cases of 3,000. Pots that size were extremely cheap, and I could squeeze huge numbers of them into the space I had to work with. Best of all, I figured, by placing the seed directly into the pot, I could save myself the added step of first sowing into seedling flats, and then transplanting the seedlings to pots.
I’ve always thought that almost nothing in the edible plant world is more fun to grow, sell, and eat than tomatoes. So when I took up farming, I went nuts growing tomato plants. Still do.
I soon learned that starting seedlings by the thousands requires a whole new way of operating, and space in my makeshift basement growing room—no surprise—was finite, as were my time and my budget. I resorted to a solution that seemed to solve all these issues at once: 2-inch peat pots, in cases of 3,000. Pots that size were extremely cheap, and I could squeeze huge numbers of them into the space I had to work with. Best of all, I figured, by placing the seed directly into the pot, I could save myself the added step of first sowing into seedling flats, and then transplanting the seedlings to pots.
It took me a couple of seasons to fully appreciate that a 2-inch pot might be economical, but it is a very tiny pot, and tiny pots result in, well, puny plants. The roots run out of room and the soil runs out of nutrients. That meant when the time came to make the transition from the growing room to the field, many of the little plants weren’t quite robust enough to hold their own against the elements. In plain terms, a lot of my baby tomatoes croaked as soon as they hit the dirt.
“You need bigger pots,” my Steadfast Spouse informed me in that tone of voice that straddles the fine line between helpful and irritating. I took his advice and upgraded to 4-inch pots. Had either of us bothered to think back to high-school geometry, we would have remembered that a 4-inch pot doesn’t take up twice as much room as a 2-inch pot, as one might assume. It actually takes up four times as much. It happens to be four times as expensive, too.
Over the years, I had also learned that even when buying from quality seed vendors, germination rates (like love, weather, and chess) are highly unpredictable.
This means that a certain number of the pots never sprout a little plant, which results in a wasted pot that ends up in the compost pile.
Moving up to 4-inch pots only multiplied the cost of the waste. All of which brought me around, of course, to the fact that this is why most farmers start seeds in the tiny cells of plastic seedling flats in the first place, and then transplant only the most vigorous sprouts to larger containers.
OK, I was ready to admit it was time to change course. I could no longer fight the fact that seedling production is a two-step process, much as I loathed the idea of the added transplantation time and the extra expense of seedling flats. On the plus side, I had done this for enough years now to know which tomato varieties had the best germination rates, and my technique had improved to the point where more of my seedlings survived transplantation and made it to maturity. That meant I didn’t have to start quite so many seedlings in the first place.
A little more thinking and—bingo! —I found the perfect cheapskate alternative to seedling flats: used egg cartons (the cardboard kind only), which hold moisture nicely and offer the added benefit of being compostable when their seedling duty is done. Best of all, they’re free!
From the cartons, the most robust seedlings get transplanted to 3-inch pots (my default size from now on), which are big enough to grow a decent plant without swallowing up growing room space and busting my budget.
It’s an almost perfect system. All that’s missing is an elf who loves to sow seeds and is willing to work for free.
