Tomatoes!

I am growing tomatoes this year again along with other things. I started them as seedlings a little while ago and I potted them and put them out on the balcony just the other day.

This is how the seedlings looked like at the time I potted them. They had pretty long stems already.

I re-potted the seedlings from the egg carton starters, into larger pots. In this photo, are two individually potted tomato plants with a pot of garlic on the balcony ledge. I didn't bury the stems any deeper then they were in the egg cartons.

The tomatoes have been re-potted for about two weeks now and they haven't made much progress. They look the same as they did when I first transplanted them. Well, I just read a blog entry from the web page Grown in the City, discussing some tips for starting tomato plants. Grown in the city promotes apartment and city gardening. I really have enjoyed getting tips and balcony garden inspirations. What I took from it was making sure the plants grow adequate root systems. The seedlings need to be re-potted deep, with the fresh soil up as far as the lowest leaves on the seedlings stem. That is not what I did when I re-potted them and that may have caused their slowing in growth.

So soon after reading that I got my butt in action and re-potted my 're-potted' tomato seedlings. This time I made sure they were buried deep in the soil.

The plants didn't have much root growth either. They were all still very superficial.

These three were replanted too. They all didn't have much root growth either. They wont stay stacked like this for long. I just want to make sure the one is the smaller pot (and therefore the lower sitting pot) got a good dose of sunlight after the replanting. I hope this makes a big difference and the plants take off. I am so looking forward to harvesting nice big juicy red tomatoes.