Seedlings

 Today I transplanted the indeterminant tomato varieties.

Below, the micro tomatoes, dwarfs, eggplants and ornamental peppers are doing very well.

The broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages are fine.  Their cotyledon leaves have yellowed as normal and need to be snipped off.  In a couple of weeks they will go outside.

Just in case you think that everything always goes well for me, below is a tray that is struggling.  There are Vinca, which I have never grown before, and some Celosia which are always finicky.  Celosia can be difficult to start and transplant just because their root systems are small and delicate.  In this case, the soil was retaining too much moisture.  I lost about eight of the Celosia seedlings.  They didn't damp off, they just withered and died.  When I pulled them, they had very little root system.  It had probably rotted.  I let the survivors dry out and today I transplanted them into fresh soil with a lot of perlite and sand added for better drainage.  I will have to continue to watch the amount of water I give them.

Next to transplant will be a tray of marigolds.  I can no longer count on buying my favorite Burpee Vanilla hybrid marigolds at local nurseries and I cannot find the F1 seeds at any reputable seed store.  I tried Burpee's Snowball variety two years ago and they were not as good.  I tried saving seeds from my Vanillas, but being F1 hybrids, they produced very weird offspring.  This year I am trying three other nearly white varieties: Moonlight, Creamy White and Vanilla Cream.  We'll see if any of them are what I want.

Besides the three white marigolds I have some Durango marigolds, Figaro dahlia seeds and my own saved single dahlia seeds.  In the background are two more varieties of Celosia.