I started my tomatoes from seed…maybe 5 seeds per cell in 4-cell pack container. When they got big enough, I transplanted one seedling into a 3” pot. Now here we are a few weeks later and I’m slowly losing plant after plant. Is this damping off? I was under the impression that that happened to seedlings when they first emerge from the soil.
Here’s some pics from today.
Any idea what’s going on?
Thanks!
PS - I used fresh, miracle grow potting soil for all my veggies, and have been for years. This is the first time I’ve had this problem.
First thing I’d blame would be the soil
And to add insult to injury, here’s a shot of my original seedling starts. These are the plants I pretty much neglected after I pulled my transplants.
I have replacements for all but 2 varieties, so there’s still hope.
Interesting. Why?
For some more data on the soil (Miracle Grow potting mix) all my other plants (except basil, strangely)are doing well. Peppers, eggplants parsley, broccoli, flowers, and even ginger are all doing fine. Even the non-transplanted tomatoes are doing fine.
And this tomato die off has been fairly gradual. For the first week after transplanting, all the plants looked good, then one by one, the leaves started drooping and shriveling up. So far I’ve lost 10 out of my 20 transplants. The ones that have survived look good now, but who knows what with happen a week from now!!!
Because nothing else was changed. The water, forex, is probably the same.
Perhaps it was a new bag, that was contaminated. [I don’t much trust Scotts/Miracle Grow]
I agree that soil is the most likely culprit. I’ve heard of and read many anecdotes of people having issues with soil with their seedlings. It isn’t always the best quality control and depending on what the components are, there are plenty of places disease, etc. can get into the mix. I would try repotting from your “stash” of original starts into new pots with new potting soil and watch them carefully. I’m not sure if that is what bacterial wilt looks like, but something like that could have been in the mix.
The only other thought would be that since you have them pretty densely planted in the original cells, if you lost a lot of roots with the transplants after you pulled them apart, they would probably be more likely to suffer from overwatering and have the roots degrade.
Thanks folks!
I transplanted them when they were much smaller, so the roots weren’t that intertwined yet. But maybe when I removed the transplant, it damaged or removed too many of the roots.
pull one out and show us the roots.
Could be you transplanted too early, stressed the plant + too little or too much water = dead plant.
Next year I’m planning on direct seeding into 16 oz cups. With proper moisture management i feel like they will perform better than plants that are transplanted 2-3 times.
Thanks. If it was a watering problem, it was probably too much, but I tried to keep things not too wet this year.
The thing that’s mysterious to me (as a non-expert) is the roots look fairly extensive for such a small plant, and the stem looks fat and healthy for an inch or so coming out of the ground, but then it seem to shrivel and die. But I don’t know if the leaves drooped first and then the stem shriveled, or if the stem shriveled and then the leaves drooped.
Learning how to properly water plants really is a trial and error process that I still get wrong occasionally. The best way I found is to learn how heavy a pot full of dry potting mix feels vs lightly damp vs saturated. The second best way is to get one of those $10 moisture measuring tools. I was never a big fan of the stick your finger in the dirt method because digging around in the root zone of each plant with your finger every couple of days seems like a terrible idea.
Also, the roots are definitely under developed. You want your root ball to look like the image below before you think about transplanting. If the soil is crumbling away from the root ball in large chunks as you are transplanting you are probably transplanting too early, damaging roots and inducing transplant shock.
way to much water is my guess from looking at the pic. overwatering is a small plants worst enemy. dont know if that is what caused the problem but i am positive it did not help.
I don’t think you can transplant tomatoes too early, I usually transplant smaller than the plant you are showing. Due to weather/time I have even transplanted at the cotyledon stage and had good results.
I don’t know what caused this. I know nothing of the soil you speak of. Is it possible this is aminopyralid contamination? I have seen a few cases of it over the past few years and it looks similar.
Agree as well, I always transplant them very early. Only thing is, the mix should be very fast drying and watering very careful, so small plants do not stay too long in wet soil, as they are not capable to dry the soil out when they do not have sufficient leaf surface.
