Learn How To Transplant Your Plants Into Your Garden

It is finally time for me to transplant some of my seedlings into my garden. In todays post, I am going to explain several key elements to help you successfully transplant your plants into your garden.

The first thing you want to do is make sure that your plants are ready to be transplanted. If you look at the photo below, notice how nice and big my seedlings have gotten. You want the root system to be quite developed. You also want your plants to be healthy. Look for nice foliage. You also want to look at the root system. I will show you more detail on this in just a moment.

The next step is going to be digging a hole in your soil. Here is how I do it: I dig a hole that is deep enough that the whole root ball will be covered. I don’t want any of the soil that is in the cup to be showing once I cover it back up with soil. Here is the important part. Dig the hole around the plant about 2 times larger in circumference. This will give you plenty of room to place your loose soil back around the plants.

The next step is to gently squeeze the plant out of the container. You can do this by gently squeezing the cup to loosen the soil away from the cup and then allow the plant to slip out of the cup. You do not want to squeeze to hard, you want the plant and the soil to come out in one nice piece. This works best if the soil is slightly damp. Notice how nice the root system looks in my transplant. This is what you are looking for.

Now that you have the plant out of the container, you want to make sure that the roots are not bound together to much. Look at these 2 pictures and notice how these roots still look like they were in the container.

At this point, you do not want to plant your plants with the root system being so tight. You will need to loosen the roots a little away from the soil as shown in the pictures below. This will allow the root system to grow into your garden. To do this, gently pull the roots outward being careful not to break the roots.

This is what your root system should look like once it is ready to plant. You might have more roots, and that is fine. You just want to make sure they are not all tangled up at the bottom to encourage more growth into your garden soil.

You are now ready to put your plant into the soil. Simply place into the hole you created and cover back up with the soil. Do not pack your soil. Roots grow better in loose soil creating a more healthy plant. Now water your plant in and watch it grow! 🙂