In the past week, the weather has made a welcomed change for the warmer. As the temperature rises, the growing season really feels as though it is taking off. In no time at all we will have field-planted tomato plants, begging to be studied.

The time came this week for transferring the seedlings into individually celled growing flats, moving from the 1020 flat to a 72 individually celled growing flat. This will allow the seedlings to continue growing in isolation, keeping the roots from becoming tangled with one another.  The goal was to transplant 12 seedlings from each variety, leaving some left over to have as a back up, if the need for them should arise. This goal was met for each variety, except for the EZ-2 variety, with only 11 seedlings to germinate and of those, only a few look as healthy as the other varieties. The only other variety that had low germination rates were the Red Racers, with only 15 seedlings successfully germinating, yet the seedlings of the Red Racers look much more vigorous and healthy than the EZ-2 strain. With only 8 viable seedlings needed for field planting, we still have the numbers necessary to meet the expectations of  the project.

There is not much more to report on from the past week. The field plot for the tomatoes is still occupied by tulips so bed prep is at a stand still until those are harvested.

Now that the seedlings have been handled, and their habitat slightly altered, I will be paying even closer attention to them.

Below are some photos I took of the finished seedling transfer: