How to Transplant Seedlings Into the Garden - 10 MISTAKES to Avoid

So you successfully reared your baby seedlings that you've grown indoors since germination, and you're ready to transplant them into the garden, into the real world. Or you went the easier route, and you got some transplants from the garden center, and you're ready to put those into the ground. Now is the moment of truth. Did you waste your time and money? If you made some of these mistakes, possibly. But then again, you're watching this video, so no worries. Hey, I'm Brian with Next Level Gardening, and if you're looking to join an online garden community that offers tips, tricks, and support to help you take your garden to the next level, you're in the right place. Get started now by hitting subscribe, and click the bell so you never miss anything. Now let's get growing. In this video, we're gonna go over 10 common mistakes that people make when planting out their seedlings that they've grown or their garden center transplants. Number one is planting too early. Now this could mean two things. First of all, if you don't know what your last frost date is or how to figure that out, I have a video on that. I'll link it down below. Your last frost date is basically the average day in your area that your last frost occurs on. And so whenever you plant anything, seeds, seedlings, whatever, you have to know what that is because the seed packet is gonna tell you when, before or after your last frost date that you could transplant those into the garden. So obviously, transplanting them out into the garden before they're ready, before your last frost date for most things, is dangerous and risky, and you may end up with your entire garden just killed by one frost. However, it could also mean after your last frost date for certain heat lovers, like cucumbers and melons, okra, and definitely peppers. They are the biggest babies of all. If you put a pepper out too soon before the nighttime temperatures or in the mid 50s, there's a good chance you're gonna stunt their growth that they will never, ever recover from. The next mistake is sowing seeds too early where they're too big to go outside and leaving them in the same tiny little transplant cell that you had them in. These here are sage. Now, I didn't plant these seeds. Emily was actually at Trader Joe's and she called me and she said, they've got little pots of sage and parsley starts and they look really nice and healthy and bushy. And she brought them home and sure enough, they did. However, by the next day, they had wilted completely down and so I pulled them out of the pots and it was literally probably 12 plants in these little pots. This is the ones that came in. The roots were completely wound around. They were completely root bound. And so I took them out and I teased all the roots apart and I transplanted just a few, actually two in each pot. The problem is once that happens, it's hard for them to recover. So don't start things too early. And if you do and you see that this is gonna be a problem and maybe you're not able to put them out in the garden as soon as you thought, then just pop them out and transplant them into something just a little bit bigger. It's just a little way to buy some time. Don't just leave them in the same thing and hope for the best. The third mistake is not hardening your plants off when it's time to put them in the garden. You can't just rush out and take them from an indoor, very secure, very stable growing environment. Warm, not a lot of sunlight, direct sunlight. Even the strongest grow light is not gonna be as strong as full sun outside. But just imagine you being inside all winter long, not going outside and then stripped naked and thrown out in the sun for all day. What's gonna happen? It's gonna be red, painful skin and you may not be able to sit down for a week. Well, the plants are gonna be the same way. Now I have a video that I did on this, so I'm not gonna go through every little detail, but it does take three to seven days to harden them off, depending on if you go the easy way, the lazy way or the traditional way. So I am gonna put that video down below so you can take a look at that and it will walk you through both ways in detail. The next tip is don't strangle your plants and trying to get them out of whatever container you have them growing in. You never want to handle a seedling or even a small transplant by the stem. If you squeeze that stem just a little too hard or if the stem just snaps, that plant is done. Always, always, always either squeeze it out of the six pack or container, whatever cell it's growing in, turn it upside down and try to get it out without even touching the plant at all. That would be the best choice. Or if they're small and you're working with them, then you can hold on to one of the leaves and try to kind of maneuver them that way. Just never, ever the stem. So you can kind of see here in this bed where I've got my cabbages kind of spaced out. So that's the next mistake is improper spacing. Always look at the seed packet to find out how far your plants are supposed to be spaced when they're put into the garden. Because if they're too close together, they're gonna be fighting, competing for nutrients, for sun and just for elbow room. It's better to have too much space between them where if there's a blank spot, you can plant some kind of companion plant, an herb, a flower, whatever. Now this can also happen in your container, in your seedling container before they've even been planted out. As you can see, this is a basil. Some of the cells, lots of seeds germinate. They were old seeds, so I put lots in. Some did fine. Some cells only have a couple. So with these, I'm not gonna take just each one of these six out and plant it in the ground and just let them deal with it. I'm gonna have to separate each one and I'm gonna separate them by holding onto one of the leaves, not the stem. And you can take a pencil or something that you can tease the roots apart with, dig through the soil a little bit and get them all untangled. Then you can plant each one in a seedling container so they each have their own little cell or you can plant them right into the garden that way. And just make sure they get watered very quickly because they don't have a huge root system yet. The next mistake would be planting them out at the wrong time of day. Now, if it's an overcast day, it doesn't matter when you plant them. If it is not, if it's a sunny day, you don't wanna add, being transplanted is already a stressful time in a plant's life. So you don't wanna add more stress by the sun beating down and baking them all day. So right now, where it's about dusk, this is the perfect time to transplant a seedling because they have all night to recover from that stress before the sun comes out tomorrow. The seventh mistake would be to plant them too deep or too shallow. Now, other than tomatoes, which I'll have, I have other videos on and I'll be doing a video on, you plant transplants, seedlings and transplants, the exact same level, the soil level of their container they're growing in needs to be at the soil level of your garden. Too low and it's gonna rot. Too high and you're risking the roots drying out or it's not gonna get a good enough foothold quickly and if there's wind or anything like that, it could topple over very easily. Number eight is not adding fertilizer to the planting hole, especially phosphorus. Phosphorus is the middle number on any bag, jug or box or container of fertilizer and phosphorus in most soils doesn't move freely through the soil. So it's best if you can get it right down there at root level. Now, if you've been watching my channel for any length of time, you know I use Neptune's Harvest products, the kelp meal and the crab and lobster formula is what I put in the hole on just about everything that I plant. You can also use bone meal and blood meal. Number nine would be not watering ASAP. Unless you're expecting a good amount of rain in the next 30 minutes, the plant's root systems, especially if you're planting them into drier soil, they're gonna need a drink pretty quick. Water deeply because not only does that saturate the soil that they're gonna be growing their new roots into, but it's also going to help push out any big air pockets that might be around that root ball that you planted. And it's just gonna help the soil in the bed or in the ground kind of meld with the root ball that you're planting in there. Number 10 is not mulching. As you can see, I've got a layer of straw in this bed. I also have some wood chips in those containers over there. Any type of mulch will work. You can use grass clippings if they're not too thick of a layer. You can use newspaper and cardboard if you're not really worried about how good it looks. Wood chips, compost, anything like that in a couple inch layer is going to hold the moisture in so you don't have to worry about, you know, the seedling's roots are probably that deep. That's not deep. So a couple of days without water and it's sunny and warm outside, it's gonna dry out the soil around that new little root ball and they're not gonna have anywhere to go to get it. All right, so don't make any of those mistakes. Once you know, it's pretty easy. There's nothing here that's super difficult that you can't do. It's really just about knowing about it. And now you do. So if you learned something, please give the video a thumbs up. I'd appreciate it. Click subscribe if you haven't and I'll see you next time.