I apparently created this post as a draft a couple years ago and never followed up. Funny to release it now since I no longer have a garden (at least until I get the balcony going), but I think it might turn out useful.
Conclusion from this experiment – pretty much all of the plants I divided out survived and thrived just fine. So I conclude that buying seedlings with more than one plant per pot can be a sneaky way to save a few bucks.
The seedlings at the local garden store were all multiple seedlings per pot:
I know they won’t do well that way so for basil, tomato, and cucumber I decided to run an experiment and try separating them. Basil and tomato stems will root in water so I figure they can survive. Cucumber, I am not so sure.
So here are separated plants:
(Note a few separated beets around the edge; they sprout in clumps and I gently dig them up and transplant to individual spots)
It’s all one big experiment, this gardening thing, isn’t it? Either I just killed my seedlings or got an amazing bargain on seedlings because I for two or three plants per pot.
Made a yummy bean soup yesterday using home grown green onion, chive, celery, and parsley, so that was rather validating.
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