Soil Make a HUGE Difference

Wow!

I guess some people have to learn the hard way.

I have read that soil is very important is growing vegetables. I've seen the side-by-side pictures of plants that were grown in basic soil and those grown in miracle grow soil.

I started my Cherokee Purple tomatoes 4 weeks before my other tomatoes because I wanted to save seed from them; thus I wanted them to flower well ahead of the others. I heeded the advice above and bought seed starting mix and the CPs got off to a great start. But, when it was time to transplant them into bigger containers, I figured that I could use a mix of garden soil and some top soil that I had left from last season.

Fast forward 8 weeks. I started my other tomatoes in the seed starting mix and transplanted them into a mixture of garden soil and sphagum (sp?). Not only have they surpassed the size of my CPs, but my CPs don't look as though they have grown since I transplanted them.
 

Heinz and Roma

 

Cherokee Purple - 4 weeks older than the Heinz/Roma


I still didn't get it. Perhaps they just grew slower than I thought?

Well two days ago, I stuck my finger in one of the CP containers to see if it needed watering and it felt like I hit concrete. The soil was so hard and compacted; I was like NO WONDER. The next day, I replanted all the CPs into the sphagum mix and I will be spraying with Fish Meal periodically to get them back on track. Some had roots on the outside of the container and some had barely no roots at all. I hope its not too late to try and save some CP seed :(.