The Country Garden Showcase- week 14

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.
John Greenleaf Whittier

 It rained, snowed, and sleeted much of the day, but the sun is peeking out now.  We are so lucky to be getting this moisture.  Ahead of this storm I planted several six packs of pansy, viola, stock, dianthis, snapdragon, and alyssum allover my yard, front and back.  I was inspired by Deb's recent flower garden posts.  I hope my new honeybees enjoy the flowers, I sure do.

Today I started transplanting the tomatoes and cucumbers that I had been growing en masse via New Victory Gardener Bob Thomson's method.  

So far, so good.  It was surprisingly easy, just as he said it would be to unpot and separate the seedlings.  


The key it seems, is not to wait too long...  

I started many seeds inside the one gallon pots to the left containing a mixture of vermiculite, sphagnum peat moss, a few handfuls of perlite, and soil-less seed starting mix.

Here are a few pics of what I did today.

 preparing to unpot gently the entire root ball at once

 root ball came out easily and look at those wonderful roots

the soilless medium broke up well releasing the roots effortlessly

 nice, long roots and healthy stems 

 I repotted them individually, some two plants to a container into 4" pots and made my own foofoo labels

 like so

Here is the result... I have about 10 more trays of pots to transplant, but I am very pleased with this method.  I will definitely use it from now on.  It's the fastest germination method I have tried and the sterile soilless components result in no seedling losses to bacteria or fungus.   

What have YOU been working on in your garden this week???