Movin' on up

It was time for my little seedlings to grow up and get a place of their own. Last year Chris and I used plastic cups to step up the plants into a larger container before finally planting them into 5-gallon pots. This year we wanted to try to be a little more eco-friendly so we decided on peat pots. We bought them online here. They were cheap, which was good because we ordered 125 of the 4.5" pots, plus some wooden plant markers and more peat pellets. It would have been even cheaper to make our own containers out of newspaper, but we didn't discover this until after we placed our order. Maybe we'll try that next year. 

I prepped the pots like this:

I filled the pots about halfway with a soil mix. I watered my seedlings, which made them easier to work with and helped minimize any transplant shock. Each of the peat pellets has a netting, which I either removed or loosened. The roots were already growing through the netting on most of the seedlings. I planted most of the seedlings so the soil just covered the top of the peat pellet. The tomatoes I planted a little deeper, as there are little bumps on the stalks that will eventually be roots. 

My brilliant idea this year was to keep the plants in boxes, making it easier to tote the plants inside at night. But this is rapidly turning into a cautionary tale, because the peat pots are staying damp and starting to grow mold on the outside. Here's how I packed them originally:

This morning I found a few more boxes and spaced everything out so that air can circulate around each pot. Apparently this is a common problem with peat pots. I read online that mold is specific to what it consumes, so if it is growing on the (dead) peat, it won't grow on the (live) green plant. I never knew mold was so discriminating.