My little seedlings were freaking me out - more than one of them was starting to look dubious at soil level - almost like they were getting damped off, but not exactly - just really thing and weak looking. Anyway, some were highly wobbly. Yesterday, I made little miniature "tomato cages" out of garden wire to help out a little but I was not liking the idea of having to stake the plants in the long term. I checked with all the various authorities on the subject and discovered that like tomatoes, you can bury that long spindly stem and it will grow roots.

So, a short time ago I finished transplanting the lot into their new (and final) homes. They are just a bunch of dollar store wastepaper baskets (about 6 litres capacity), but they seem to be about the correct size for what this type of plant is supposed to grow to and really, it doesn't matter if they aren't since I am out of room. I experimented a little with the transplants, a couple I buried half the stem (the strongest stems), a couple I buried 3/4 of it (2 of the so-so stems), and the two weakest stems I buried 1 to about 2cm of the bottom of the leaves and the other so that the cotyledons are just above the soil.

The pots are so large and there was so much exposed earth that I cut circles out of the leftover emergency blankets and covered most of the soil surface to save on a little light absorption. I didn't put drain holes in the bottom of the pots yet since I didn't have anything to use for drip pans. Instead I put a significant layer of clean stone/gravel in the bottoms so water would have a place to sit away from the soil and roots in case of any excess. At some point when I can get some foil pans or something to put underneath I will probably drill some drain holes but for now the stones should do - this has worked with vegetable plants I have grown before.

Had to rearrange the fans, lights and such to make everything work again, probably will spend the next few days tweaking that.

An interesting thing I found was that the plants with absolutely the strongest leaves were the ones with the weakest stems. All the plants have a 3rd node/second set of true leaves, but the one with the weakest stem has the second set nearly as large as the first set of true leaves, and the second most wobbly plant has the second largest leaves on the 3rd node. They must have been putting too much into leaf and not enough into stem.

All leaves are a nice healthy green colour, so I am hoping I don't have to touch them again for a while and probably won't be boring anyone with these tedious near-daily updates for at least a week.

Well, unless they all keel over dead.