How To Start Tomato Seeds - part 5

Time to cull the herd

For some people this is very difficult. They can't bring themselves to eliminate one single plant. If you do this you'll end up with too many plants and TONS of tomatoes. That may be exactly what you want but I recommend having one plant per cell. The plants root better and aren't competing with each other for limited nutrients. Here is the flat before we thin the plants. Notice there are as many as 4 plants per cell.


Here is a close up of the young plants. As I stated in post 4 you should wait until you have true leaves before you do any of this. In this picture you can really see the difference between the true leaves and the cotyledons. Also notice that one of the plants is considerably larger than the other (it's just to the right). When deciding which plant to keep I almost always go for the larger more robust looking plant.
Here is the actual process. ALWAYS cut the unwanted plants out. DO NOT pull them. The roots are larger than you know and when you pull them you will probably damage the plant you want to keep. Get yourself some scissors or small shears and CAREFULLY select the plant you want to remove. If you check the picture below you see I am removing a plant. I cut only with the very tip of the scissors since I don't want to inadvertently take out a wanted plant. I've done this in the past and it is very frustrating.

Here are the results. The plants can now freely grow without any competition. They now have room to grow. One other cool thing is the smell of the cut plants - they smell just like tomato leaves (cause that's what they are!) - it just reminds me of whats to come this summer when I reach into one of these plants and pick a ripe fruit. I can't wait!

For the next few weeks it's all about making sure they don't dry out while also preventing them from being over watered. It's a fine line but after a while you can tell just by looking at them. Keeping the plants as close to the lights as possible will help them grow without getting too thin. We'll talk more about that in the future.