Tomato Seedlings

[Plumed90]

Hi all,

I planted some Moneymaker tomatoes into a 24x seed tray. I've stupidly left them for about 8 weeks and now they are each about 20-30cm tall. Are they ruined or is there any saving them?


Thanks!
Dan

[rhyswales]

Hi all,

I planted some Moneymaker tomatoes into a 24x seed tray. I've stupidly left them for about 8 weeks and now they are each about 20-30cm tall. Are they ruined or is there any saving them?


Thanks!
Dan

Hard to tell without pictures. When you say left do you mean without water? Are they leggy? Try and upload a few pictures if you can.

[veggiechicken]

Photos would help but tomatoes are very tough!. if the plants look healthy, but cramped, you could try repotting them individually, and very deep so that the compost comes up the stem.

[Plumed90]

I'll try and get a picture of them after work.

They look cramped but are standing up and about pencil thick. There is approx 40 plamts in the 24xseed tray.

Can I plant them all the way to the first set of leaves? That might help...

[Tripmeup]

As others say, pics will tell the story, but if they are ok, then definitely plant them deep as VC says..Up to leaves definitely and maybe more depending on how tall they have become

[WendyC]

Tomatoes are surprisingly forgiving. Give the tray a really good soak by standing it in another tray of water for a few hours or even over night. As suggested repot individually. Depending on how tangled the roots are you might need to sacrifice a weaker plant by cutting it off at soil level. In fact think about how many plants you really need/ want / have space for and pick the best of the bunch, with a few spares. Easier to look after a few good ones than a load of poor ones.

[maverick451]

You can alwasy chop the leggy top down to just above a set of leaves and then regrow from a side shoot.

post a pic

[Potstubsdustbins]

Pot on very deep, done correctly the little hairs you can see on the main stem will become roots and give you a good strong plants.

Get you deepest pots and sprinkle a little compost in the bottom, remove any leaves that would be below the compost level of the filled pot provided you leave some leaves on to do their work and top up the pot.

[Plumed90]

6 planted deep in grow bags and the rest in pots. What do you think?

[bramble]

Looking good, they should be fine.

[vixylix]

They look fine to me!

[Bigmallly]

The ones in growbags look fine but I'd take Pottys' advice and transplant the others into deeper pots, maybe flower buckets if you can get hold of some:

[Cadalot]

6 planted deep in grow bags and the rest in pots. What do you think?

You must be over watering to be able to grow them on the side like that :

[Plumed90]

Interesting... How can you tell?

[Jungle Jane]

Moneymakers are quite huge compared to a cherry tomato or something,they grow about 4-5ft tall. Looking at the middle picture,the sticks look quite thin to support a moneymaker,it might be good to put some stronger 5ft canes in now before the roots grow all over the place & I hope the middle plant has enough space,it looks like there's only a hands space between plants? Are you putting anything directly in front of that grow bag,like another couple of grow bags because I'm thinking about air circulation for the middle plants & the ones that would be at the back. I did this one year,I put all my tomato grow bags next to each other & had brown dead patches within the compacted tomatoes so I hope no-one ever has that problem.