Bigger pot == bigger plant

One week ago I posted about moving some of my tomato seedlings into larger pots. Today you can see the difference between the seedlings in the large pots vs. the ones in the original small Jiffy pots. My thought was "how there be this big of a difference in one week." Well, there are a couple obvious solutions for this:

• Small Jiffy Pots are really small


• Really small pots mean really small roots


• Really small roots mean pathetic plants

Ok, so that seemed like a reasonable explanation, but no amount of free space seemed to explain the rapid growth to me...and then I figured it out. You see, I am what I would consider a "pretty much organic" gardener. This means that in general I utilize organic options, but I am not opposed to straying from that when I feel the situation justifies it. Given that my seedlings are growing inside my pantry, I was scared of the potential smells of fish emulsion or seaweed extract, and instead utilized some water-soluble Miracle-Gro fertilizer. Both transplants pictures receive the same single application of fertilizer. My new explanation of why the plants differs so much is:

• I bottom-watered the plants, meaning the water and fertilizer was pulled up through holes in the bottoms of the pots.


• Large Pot == More Dirt


• More Dirt == More wicking capacity


• More wicking capacity == More water


• More water == More Miracle-Gro


• More Miracle-Gro == More Plant

Since the plants were allowed to wick up as much water as they wanted, the moisture level in the big pot was probably about the same as in the little pot. This gave the plant in the larger pot a reservoir of fertilizer which it was able to pull from, while the small plant only had a tiny reservoir. Since I do not fertilize continuously, the small plant quickly consumed the fertilizer and then only had the plain water I gave it, while the large plant was able to work on its collection of fertilizer much longer.

I am amazed at how geeky I was able to make a post about tomato transplants, but there you have it--I am a geek!