As you’ve probably all realised by this point, I’ve had some trouble growing tomatoes from seed.

While that all seems to have sorted itself out, it occurred to me that I would probably need to prick my tomatoes out. Until I went to the seminar on growing vegetables from seed, I’d never heard of this process before (and to be honest I don’t know if I would normally bother to do it as I tend to grow one seed/punnet because I hate thinning plants out). However, since my tomatoes and peas were trying to cohabitate, I decided that I’d better get on my bike and fix the problem.

Tomato and Pea Seeding cohabiting.

Before I started I had fully intended to transplant the seedlings into toilet rolls so that I could then directly plant them, but apparently I totally forgot about this plan and just moved them into more seedling trays instead.

In order to transplant the seedlings I used a chopstick to make a hole in the punnet for the new seedling.

Look, a hole!

Then I placed the chopstick underneath the seedling and lifted it up gently, while holding onto the stalk. I have also heard of people using forks for this step.

Tomato plant and roots. And my dirty fingernail…

The plant came away easily, and I moved it into its new home. I watered the soil both before and after the tomatoes were pricked out because it made the potting mix easier to manipulate, and to make sure that the tomatoes didn’t get stressed.

10 tomato seedlings transplanted in all.

For anyone that hasn’t tried this before, pricking out tomatoes is much easier than I would have thought! I was convinced that I would manage to kill the ones I transplanted, but they’re still alive (so far…).

Pricked out tomato seedlings 1 week after transplant – still alive!

2 weeks later. Still alive AND have their first true leaves!

   Have you ever tried pricking out seedlings? Or tried something that turned out to be easier than expected?