For the tomatoes: Instead of the small pots, try using milk cartons or plastic soda bottles with the bottoms cut off. Set them in trays, fill with seed-starting mix, sow seed. Then when it's time to set them out in the garden you just slide the container off, with minimal root disturbance.
For garlic, see if you can scrounge up some 5-gallon pots. People throw them away all the time. Check with landscapers to see if they wil give you some used ones. Fill them with about 2/3 potting soil and 1/3 composted manure. Plant one clove in the center of each pot. They won't size up the way they would have if planted out last November, but you should still get bulbs.
Forgot to directly answer your question - it's better to sow garlic directly in the ground. (Preferably in November.) The 5-gallon pot trick is if you don't have ground to sow them into. I did that with extra shallots last year and it worked a treat.
I use my milk cartons sidwaysvixterFebruary 5 2009, 22:57:17 UTC
with one side cut off. I can get 6 or 8 starts in there. Later I transplant to 4" pots and even gallon pots if they get ahead of me. You might be able to find pots through freecycle http://www.freecycle.org .
Also keep control of the tools. Don't let each kid get a rake or a spade. You only need to get a few tools out and make them take turns.
Otherwise you may have a bunch of 4th grade boys sporting "woodies". Yes, that actually happened to me.
I also use newspaper pots for hard to transplant things like carrots, beets and spinach. I'm sure my local newspaper only uses soy inks, so even colored pages are ok. I wouldn't use shiny paper like from magazines or inserts, though.
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For garlic, see if you can scrounge up some 5-gallon pots. People throw them away all the time. Check with landscapers to see if they wil give you some used ones. Fill them with about 2/3 potting soil and 1/3 composted manure. Plant one clove in the center of each pot. They won't size up the way they would have if planted out last November, but you should still get bulbs.
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Also keep control of the tools. Don't let each kid get a rake or a spade.
You only need to get a few tools out and make them take turns.
Otherwise you may have a bunch of 4th grade boys sporting "woodies". Yes, that actually happened to me.
I also use newspaper pots for hard to transplant things like carrots, beets and spinach. I'm sure my local newspaper only uses soy inks, so even colored pages are ok. I wouldn't use shiny paper like from magazines or inserts, though.
Reply
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