These young tomatoes are really looking good.

[ducks4you]

, Growin-Stuff from NORTH EAST OHIO.
Thanks for identifying yourself. It really is hard to help anyone OR admire anyone's efforts when we don't know where you garden.
I have an uncle and cousins--not close--that lived in Mentor, your neck of the woods.
You are a bit colder and damper than me.
We actually have a local cacti that lives in the sandy shoals of one of our state parks.
Love your tomatoes!!
I don't think mine will be that big when I put them out, but I have lot, so we'll see.

 

[ducks4you]

@seedcorn, I have become a BIG fan of heat mats, probably bc I have to start most plants in my basement.
My 6 cats turn window seed starting efforts into Olympic Sports with disasterous and dirty and brutal endings.
I only have last year's geraniums bc I caged them in a window planter next to a north facing window in the basement.

 

[flowerbug]

, Growin-Stuff from NORTH EAST OHIO.
Thanks for identifying yourself. It really is hard to help anyone OR admire anyone's efforts when we don't know where you garden.
I have an uncle and cousins--not close--that lived in Mentor, your neck of the woods.
You are a bit colder and damper than me.
We actually have a local cacti that lives in the sandy shoals of one of our state parks.
Love your tomatoes!!
I don't think mine will be that big when I put them out, but I have lot, so we'll see.

you can find cactus growing in Michigan, it's not the cold that does them in but being overgrown by everything else. we had a few in pots growing for about a dozen years. they even flowered one year. eventually the pots broke and Mom didn't want to deal with them any longer so they were retired from the plant displays.

 

[Growin-Stuff]

The transplanting into 1/2-gallon pots begins.

 

[ducks4you]

Looks great! 'Bout TIME--look at those roots!!
I Hope you are digging them deep holes.
I have seen the bend the stem method pushed for the last few years. Yeah, it works, but their roots never get as deep as a nice deep planting hole.

 

[Growin-Stuff]

, Growin-Stuff from NORTH EAST OHIO.
Thanks for identifying yourself. It really is hard to help anyone OR admire anyone's efforts when we don't know where you garden.
I have an uncle and cousins--not close--that lived in Mentor, your neck of the woods.
You are a bit colder and damper than me.
We actually have a local cacti that lives in the sandy shoals of one of our state parks.
Love your tomatoes!!
I don't think mine will be that big when I put them out, but I have lot, so we'll see.

Mentor is about an hour due North of me.
I'm a bit wetter and cooler than you are but not nearly as Mentor. Being as close to the lake as Mentor is it makes them colder, and they get more snow.

The Eastern Prickly Pear cactus (devil's tongue) will grow up here but the soil in my location is a sandy black dirt and holds too much water, this area was once all swamp land and sometime mother nature tries to take it back, so the truck farms around here have to run their field pumps 24-7 in the early spring and during the rainy season.

 

[Growin-Stuff]

Looks great! 'Bout TIME--look at those roots!!
I Hope you are digging them deep holes.
I have seen the bend the stem method pushed for the last few years. Yeah, it works, but their roots never get as deep as a nice deep planting hole.

Thank You.
They could have gone into 1/2-gallon pots last week (3 weeks old) just didn't have the time.
I plant deep, lol. They got planted about 4 inches deeper than they were in the 4-inch pot and when they get planted in the ground about half their stem (or better) will be in the ground. When they get put in the ground, I will amend the bottom of the holes with a mixture of rabbit manure, compost, alfalfa meal, 5-5-5, and whole organic oats then add about 4 inches of soil on top before planting the tomatoes.

 

[ducks4you]

What shocked me was a photo from the Illinois list of native plants taken an hour NE of me in Kennekuk County Park. I-74 drives through and over the waterways there, and the Eastern Prickly Pear cactus grows in exposed sand there, wild.
WHERE you live is vital to WHAT you can successfully grow. For example, we live at ~39 degrees latitude, relatively same as Philadelphia and Northern Missouri. Missouri's soil is more sandy and desert like, we have loess soil, at least where I live and north bc the glaciers stopped about an hour's drive south of me. THEY have different soil than me.
A farmer who worked for a farm supply store, and who used to stack hay for me when I bought my hay From that store, told me that in my county the depth of top soil (loess) varies from 3 inches to 18 inches.
Every time a farmer tills up and it dries out and we get a wind, neighbor to their east gets their soil.
2 years ago I pleasantly smelled that one farmer had deposited pig manure on his fields. It only smelled bad for 3 days, but I am sure the next year's crops benefitted. And, YES it wasn't somebody's septic tank--different odor.
When I first moved into MY property, had been a farm, all but 5 acres sold off, I tried gardening where I tilled up the grass. TOTAL clay!
Pennsylvania at 39 degrees latitude is wetter, although most of our lands in this state are reclaimed swamp.
I can keep 3 horses on pasture 1/2 of the year bc the grass will feed them.
Out west, it takes something like 50 acres to feed one horse bc the grass is scarce.
We are swampy but when we dry out, we Really dry out and our soil cracks when not amended.
I am purchasing a 2nd soaker hose this week and I am continually dumping (winter) and moving use (horse) stall bedding to conserve water in my gardening.
After two years of use it breaks down really nicely to mix with the existing soil.