I'm afraid my impatiens may be dying

I transplanted my impatiens to larger pots last week, b/c the roots were growing out of their cells. The leaves are now looking really droopy, and not as dark green as they were before I transplanted them. The leaves on some of them have black/brown spots around the edges. Is there anything I can do to save them? Or should I chalk this up to a learning experience?

Seedlings will sometimes suffer from a bit of transplant shock when you move them, so it could just be that although the black/brown spots around the edges sounds more like a fungal problem. I would check on your watering...one thing that happens when you put something into a larger pot is that all of a sudden there's a lot more soil around to hold water than there was before, so you need to water less than you were before. And if the pot is pretty large relative to the size of the roots it becomes pretty easy to overwater them because the roots are small and can't use up all that moisture very quickly, so they end up sitting in wet soil for too long.

Thanks ecrane. Maybe it is over watering. That makes sense. They've seem dryer on top of the containers than they did when they were in their small cells, so I've been watering them more frequently since I transplanted them. I'll let them get good and dry (maybe wait about a week before watering them again). Thanks for the info!
--Pam

If you're watering them more often than you did when they were in the smaller cells then I think it's definitely overwatering--if anything they should need less water now, at least until the roots grow more and fill up the pot a bit more. The surface can get dry looking pretty quickly, but underneath the surface it can still be quite wet. If there's room in the pot, it can help to stick your finger down in there an inch or two to see how wet it is rather than just guessing when they might be dry enough to water again.

Thanks. I'll do that. I hope my plants can recover.

Well, my impatiens recovered, and look really happy again. In fact, one of them has a flower bud on it. I'm pretty excited. This is my first time growing anything from seed indoors. I feel like my baby is about to head off to college. This is really fun.

Glad to hear that! It's always such a rewarding feeling when seedlings turn out like they should--even when it's not the first time it still feels that way. I think it's something about taking that little tiny seed and nurturing it into a beautiful plant, it gives you more of a sense of accomplishment than buying a plant from the garden center.