Welcome to Day 15 of the 30 Day Challenge: How to Start a Vegetable Garden. In my last few articles, I discussed Earth Day and why it is so important to grow your own food, hardening your seedlings, and how to plant potatoes.

If you missed any of these articles, you can find them and more on my website. A link is located within my Street Articles profile to all of the articles for this challenge.

What is Potting Up?

Potting up is when you transplant seedlings (or plants) from a small container to a larger container. When starting seeds in starter pods, the new seedlings can only grow so large before they outgrow those tiny pods.

In order for the plants to grow larger and stronger to be ready for transplant to their permanent home, they may need to be potted up.

When to Pot Up?

Once your seedlings have at least 4-6 permanent leaves, it's time to transplant them to a bigger container. This is true only for the very tiny starter pods (they are about 1" x 1" square pods).

If you started your seeds in a pod that was 3" x 3" or larger, you will not need to pot up your seedlings before planting them in their permanent homes.

Tip: The first two leaves to grow when your seed sprouts are not the permanent leaves. Do not count these when determining if it is time to pot up your seedling. Additionally, consider the size of your seedling when potting up. 4-6 permanent leaves is a guideline, but if the plant is only an inch high, it should probably grow a little stronger before you pot it up.

My Seedling Update

I still have my seedlings in their tiny pods. They have been hardened off for a week or two now and have a permanent home on my back porch which receives a lot of sunlight.

The squash and zucchini are doing fantastic and are 4" or more high. I am ready to place them in their permanent home (our raised bed) but have discovered that another tree must come down first as it is causing a lot of shade. I will transplant these when the tree has been removed.

Our tomato plants are doing great, which is a relief after how scrawny and thin they were two weeks ago. They are ready to be potted up and are close to 2" high. They are still very fragile looking, so I do not want to place them in their permanent homes yet. Since they will be in an upside down planter, they need to be very strong before they are placed in their final destinations.

Our lettuce is starting to look much better. The plants are still small, about 1-1.5" high, but the permanent leaves are getting bigger and leafier. I have not yet decided, but will probably pot them up when I pot up the tomatoes as I don't think they are big enough for their permanent home yet. I'll need to research this one a little more.

I planted watermelon and cantaloupe in 3" x 3" pods last week and they have been inside under the plant lights 8-10 hours per day. One of the watermelons sprouted today, which caused a lot of excitement in our household!

I do have some seeds that I started in their permanent homes that are doing great - the dwarf carrots are really moving along nicely with the seedlings about 2" high. My peppers were just planted last week and have not yet sprouted. They got drenched outside in a bad storm, so if I don't see any sprouts by next week I'll probably start them over.

We need to get the cucumber, spinach, peas, and green bean seeds started. Perhaps that is this week's project...

30 Day Challenge

For those of you who are following along with the challenge, how are you doing? Are your seedlings ready for potting up or transplant into their permanent homes? If you have any gardening questions, please post them here or on my blog and I will do my best to help you.