Another fine mess: How hard can it be to transplant tomatoes?

June 11, 2016

The potted tomatoes on our patio love the recent hot and sunny weather. All of them, even the puny seedlings I ordered by mail, have plumped up and grown significantly taller this week. Like children whose shoes have become too tight, some of my tomatoes suddenly seemed in danger of being pot-bound, with their roots twisted and jammed into a dense web that stunts their development. I had to rescue them. The big, affordable pots I ordered online had not yet arrived, so I checked the patio and scavenged the garden shed for substitutes. By transplanting two big pots of herbs into smaller containers, I found roomy new homes for two of the tomato plants. Moving the rosemary, lavender, Italian basil, lemon thyme and English thyme into new pots, separating the used potting soil into two big buckets – one for hardened root clumps, destined for the dirt-mound cemetery near our back fence; the other for transferring usable soil back into the empty big pots. And I still hadn't transplanted any tomatoes.

Under a shelf in the garden shed, I found two more big pots, filled with years-old soil. I decided to use a long-handled spade to scoop out the cobwebbed potting mix. After only a few shovels, my spade hit plastic. Years ago, I'd heard a gardener suggest turning a smaller plastic pot upside down in a big planter before filling the larger pot with soil. This technique saved soil, and the plants could spread their roots underground, over the upturned pot. The suggestion did not mention that, over time, a buried plastic pot will disintegrate upon contact with a shovel, and its pieces will shatter, making the used potting soil unsuitable even for compost. I also learned that a larger, often-used plastic pot, in which the small one had been buried, will also disintegrate when a shovel hits it – even if the shoveler is a wimp with no power in her knees. All the dry, granular potting soil will leak onto the patio as the big planter gasps its final, plastic breaths. The shoveler, meanwhile, will realize she is close to sunstroke because she has been struggling with those danged pots for several hours on a concrete patio, facing south, on a hundred-million-degree afternoon. (Why, yes, I do spend a lot of time volunteering with elementary school children, who understand the value of creative numbers and hyperbole.)

After a retreat to the kitchen for water, I dragged the big pots into the patio's scant shade and began the transplanting. I didn't consider that transferring two-foot-tall tomato plants, with leggy stalks and fragile new blossoms, into more spacious containers required coordination. I carefully tapped the bottom of the original pot until the tomato, with its skirt of soil and root ball, started to slide free. Then, with one hand, I laid the plant on its side, with its head bent over the edge of the big pot, while freeing its soil ball. It's lucky I've had some recent experience holding my newborn granddaughter, because the delicate tomato plant needed gentle handling. Finally I settled the plant safely, right side up. The last step was refitting the tomato cage over and around the plant. The same cage that fit loosely when the tomato was a fledgling now needed careful maneuvering to avoid breaking off the stalk.

After watering all the plants on the patio, I staggered inside and drank more water. I found my chief garden staffer sprawled, belly up, on the rug, directly in front of the air conditioner vent. Benjamin BadKitten looked quite cool and comfortable. “Do you know where I've been for three hours?” I asked my favorite slacker. He yawned. “I've been getting heat stroke on the patio, transplanting tomatoes, and now I have to cook dinner in the hundred-million-degree kitchen!” BBK flicked his tail. Dinner. He knows that word. He requested poached salmon, with a piquant bearnaise sauce, buttered rice, and fresh, long-stemmed blades of grass. For dessert, a mouse mousse would be delightful, he added. He waddled after me to supervise dinner preparations, until I informed him that salmon and rice were not on the menu, he would have to forage for his own blades of grass – and if he ever tried to bring a mouse mousse into my kitchen, he'd end up as a barbecued BadKitten – with a tomato on top.