Trickier Transplanting
Guest writers, Nadamayi and Phil
Lest you get the impression that we are experienced expert
gardeners, this section should dispel any such thoughts. You have followed us
on our own journey through indoor gardening, a first for both of us. In this
section we will explain how this container got to be the mess that is, and how
with grace we were able to salvage all the plants.
What you see is a parsley plant on the right hand part of
the container, one large tulsi plant and many very small tulsi plants in the
middle. What happened was as follows. The tulsi seeds were planted first, too
many and too deep. After six weeks, nothing had come up, so the parsley was
planted in the same container. The parsley came up, and then the tulsi started
to sprout.
Many factors influence the speed with which a seed will
sprout. Temperature is a critical factor. The tulsi were planted the end of
December when the space was cold (It gets warmed by the sun during the day, and
by radiant heat from the house at night, there is no auxiliary heat in the
space). Add to that the fact that the seeds were buried too deep, and the
result was nothing showed up for two months.
So, how do we salvage this? A variation on the simple
transplanting shown with the arugula plants. The idea is to separate each of
the plants, and then place the separated plants in their own container.
First, we took the whole root mass and all the plants out of
the container, so that we could get a better idea of how to separate the
palnts.
Then we gently pulled the parsley away from the tulsis. And
next one of the outlier tulsi plants was separated from the mass of tulsis.
The baby tulsi was given its new home
The tulsi plants were further separated, taking the outside
plants from the entangled root mass
Pulling one of the larger tulsi plants out of the mass
Dropping the tulsi into its new home. The objective during
this to do the minimal stress and trauma as possible to the roots. So, once the
plant is carefully extracted here it is placed into the depression and the soil
is then carefully placed around it.
Next was further separating of the tulsi plants, carefully
pulling the plants apart trying not to damage any of the roots.
Each plant was put into a container.
The final result. Ten small, two larger tulsi, and a parsley
plant.
Three months later, here are the same tulsi plants, having
been transplanted to the outside garden. They are about 16-18 inches tall and
almost that large across.
