After being away for the long week-end, I was happy to come home and see that all my seedlings survived my absence. Four days was pushing it though- a few had started to wilt but I think they can be rescued.
This morning I spent some time thinning and repotting some of my snapdragons and verbena bonariensis seedlings. It is a difficult thing to do, after raising seedlings from “birth”. The temptation for me is to keep them all out of a misguided motherly attachment, and also my greed in wanting as many plants as possible. But I have learned from experience to be ruthless in my thinning! It is better to have strong plants, but a few less of them, than to have more plants but have them all be weak from having grown too close together. If it is a seedling I really want to have more of, then I will separate and repot two that are growing in the same cell, but if I already have enough of a particular plant (remember, I still must spend the time hardening them off and then transplanting them all outside - more plants is not necessarily better!) then I just snip the extras off at the base with a pair of small scissors and be done with it. Much less work!
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