My Boys 5 and 9 planted these in a Kid grow greenhouse. The directions said put 5 to 6 seeds per pot. However, they thought the more the merrier I guess. They now have like 20 or more sprouts in these tiny little pots that are only 2 inches high and 1.5 inches wide. The directions say the cannot be moved until they have 4 to 6 leaves but with them so crowded I am afraid they will smother before then. How can I save them?
oh my don't you just love kids. the only thing i can say is try to move them to a bigger pot and hope for the best. or you can try to split them and move them. eventually mother nature will do the weeding because there are way to may in the pot. i would just try to move them to a bigger pot and see what happens.
Your strategy probably also depends on how many Snapdragons you want to end up with. If you just want 6 of them just hand remove all but about 5 or 6 of the seedlings for now and let them grow more before removing a couple more of the remaining ones. If you want 12 of them you can remove many of the seedlings and leave 6-12 of them scattered around in the container for the time being. Once they're a little more established it will be easier to remove the clump from the existing container and split the dirt/seedlings up and repot them separately. I tend to always leave more seedlings than I intend to eventually plant just in case a few of them die as they're maturing. If you just leave one seedling and it dies you're outta luck. It you leave several of them you have some margin for error.
This is a good time to teach the boys about life and death, if you have never had the oppertunity to do so before.
It is also a good time to teach them that sometimes decisions we make in the moment effect what we do long term.
Or you could take a sharp razor knife, and cut them in to little pieces and replant the sections in a seed mixture.
I kinda perfer teaching the boy that this is how life goes....
I might add I am so happy they are enjoying planting. I used to let my kids, when they were little, put there fingers in the ground and plant the really big seeds. What a kick when the heads came up.
Now I did take advantage of the garden once to teach my daughter a lesson. She was about 15 and spent a night over, and had her first experience with wine. When I learned of what happened, I told her to come home.... via walking the mile home (we lived in Woodstock NY at the time very safe), when she got home I saw she had a hang over. I gave her breakfast and told her now was a good time to work in the garden. Let me tell you there was not much weeding going on, but she learned a lesson, not the one I thought she would learn tho.... she learned don't let Mom catch ya. LOL...
Good luck..
Nancy.
Thanks, everyone I think I will take my chances cuting then up and puting into diff pots. The Soil Stuff what ever it is in these easy to grow Kid green house thing is kind solid not much like pottting soil at all. Maybe I could cut them in to four and put them in a potting mix and maybe send up a prayer to the green thumb gods LOL.
As for teaching them a lesson I may leave one only and see what it does. They can learn from that one. Next year they will have to begin sooner with their planting as they bought this for me in June. They wanted me to have Flowers for my birthday in July. Being as snapdragons don't bloom for up to 60 days after the are planted they may bloom just in time for frost. Humm I wonder can I keep these indoors through Frost and put them out next spring just a thought?
Hi... glad you found your answer, and hope I helped a little.
I live upstate NY, and I put in snapdragons against a house. There was little wind there, but we had our share of snow as NY winters go. To my suprise the snapdragons came up and are now putting out their lovely little snappers heads. So you could put them in a more or less protected area and see what happens. Or put some in a pot that you can take inside, I would try it. You have so many you could do almost anything the boys can thing of.
I never thought about moving plants from the garden inside, except for impatients. Then came a time when I planted some peppers in a decorative pot, when the winter came the pot came inside along with the rest of the house plants... Well 3 years later this bell pepper is still blooming and I have half a dozen little peppers on both plants!
Good luck
Nancy.
thanks Nancy you have been so helpful on more than one of my threads.
