A follow-up. I transplanted the five-week old squash and cucumbers from DE to their final resting places. One of two squash plants and two of five cucumber seedlings came out easy from the starter tray as they all had strong set of roots wrapped up along the bottom. Everything else was a stressful mess, where I used a knife to shimmy in and under. Some roots were left behind. I did not do any trickery with gelatin, agar, chia seeds, etc.
Today, the day after, all the squash and cucumbers look great. Pictured: squash seedling root-bound and two squash in final containers.
In the same starter tray with DE:
- 13 of 16 tomatoes germinated (no go with 2xtaz chocolate, 1x amalfi orange, oh well)
- only 3 of 16 peppers germinated but all three had messed up tops (see bottom right image... any idea what happened?), so I'm trying them again, this time in regular 4" pots.
- 6 of 8 eggplants germinated (2x Ao eggplants did not make it).
I've never grown eggplant. It took 2.5 weeks for them to germinate, and I decided to try to up-pot them yesterday (total five weeks), but they had almost no roots. They seem okay so far, maybe just slower growing. Perhaps I should've given them longer.
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