Monday, April 09, 2012

Thinning tomatoes. Only time will tell how well I did.

I cannot believe that I forgot, yet again, to take a before picture. But look at this great 'after'.
It was getting a little crowded under the grow lights. I was unsure exactly when to thin out the tomatoes, but decided it was simply getting too crowded. I will be glad when I have a few years gardening under my belt and learn to just trust myself to do the right thing. I got a great piece of advice from Erica at Northwest Edible Life. She uses scissors to snip off the inferior plants so she's not disturbing roots. I would have pulled them out...thank you Erica.

3 comments:

Mark Willis said...

You're right Erin, there's no real substitute for personal hands-on experience. I always sow my Tomatoes very thinly - usually just two seeds in each small pot - and then I remove the weaker seedling soon after germination. I pull them out rather than snipping them off, and it has never presented any problems for me.

Erin said...

Hi Mark. So do you wait to see what they grow like are do you prick out the smallest, last to grow? That would sure be easier than what I did. I also planted in threes, it really seemed like a lot of seed to be wasting.

charlie b. said...

Your tomatoes are looking good! Mine are about the same size. I always seem to not want to thin out the smaller ones. I want to keep them all!! Then I end up with too many. Ah well.