Day 17 before the transplant, everyone looks good and happy, PGCs in green cups
So as I stated before, when transplanting, I use moist soil. When I say moist I mean closer to dry than wet. If you squeeze it you should feel moisture but not be able to see it. One or two drops of water at the most and even then I’d still try to dry it a bit. I water the transplant 24 hours before transplanting. Depending on how aggressive the plant is drinking, 12 may be more appropriate but 24 worked well this time.
I will place the cup into the container so I can get a slight imprint into the soil. Not too much though, I don’t even tamp my soil down, I just fill my containers and let it rest as is. Once I’ve got the imprint I sprinkle a little myco like this:
While I aggressively pursued myco colonization in the solo cups, I don’t take any chances. These plants are hungry, so if for some reason myco hasn’t colonized, it will the moment those hungry plant roots set down on it. Any myco that doesn’t connect during the process will eventually spawn as the roots branch out.
Once the myco is down I push up on the bottom of my solo cup softly. This is usually enough to pop them right out like this:
We can see in that image the roots are exactly how we want them. No signs of circling, roots are fuzzy, white, and coming through in multiple places. It’s exactly what I wanted to see. Here’s a slightly angled shot of the roots:
I take the root ball and place it gently into its new container. I fill in the dirt all around it making sure to not tamp down or compact the soil at all. Once I’ve filled the container to my liking depending on the transplant I lay down a band of nutrients all around the plant as can be seen here:
I lay the nutrients down halfway between the plant and the edge, closer to the edge. I want the roots to grow toward it, I don’t want them being forced to engage. Once the mulch goes down roots will grow above the soil line and tap into anything that hasn’t made its way down on its own. This will make future top dressings even more potent.
After I’ve completed the transplant I place the plant somewhere lower, or to the side, or both. In this case I just moved the plants to the floor instead of the table. The floor is about 18 or so inches lower than the table. Similar to a cloudy day. I do this for about 24 hours, so tonight they’ll get back to where they were before transplant.
In my experience, if done correctly, the plant gets back to growing almost right away. If you mess it up it droops and looks sad for a few days. Within an hour of transplanting the plants were back doing their thing and when I checked them this morning they looked happy.
I have 2 more PGCs to transplant. Both were about a day or two behind the other two so I expect they’ll be ready tonight or tomorrow.
