Published: 10 April 2026 - Watch on YouTube
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the garden here in Chichester, West Sussex. It is Easter Monday, exactly 14 days since I sowed my tomato seeds on the 21st of March, just after the spring equinox, and the little seedlings are ready for their next step. Today I am pricking out and potting up all eight varieties, and I want to show you exactly how I handle these fragile young plants.
I am really happy with how these have come up. I sowed five seeds of each of my eight varieties, so 40 seeds in total, and 36 of them have turned into seedlings. The back rows all gave me five out of five, and the front row came in at four out of five, which I think is brilliant.
I waited a few days longer than I normally would this year, quietly hoping those last four missing seeds might still push through. They clearly do not have the will to do it, so I am not going to keep waiting. It is time to sacrifice those four and get on with potting up.
Tomato seedlings are gentle little things at this stage, and it is so easy to snap a stem, so I run my compost through the sieve again before I start. Fine compost lets the delicate stems and the roots settle and bond without a struggle. Later on, when the plants are bigger and tougher, I stop bothering to sieve and let them cope with a bit more structure.
For pots I use reused ones from garden centre plant purchases, which is fine, it really does not matter. I would usually reach for smaller pots for this first potting up, but most of my seedlings have got a little too leggy for my liking, so I am using the taller pots for the tallest ones and moving on to the smaller pots once those run out.
I like to keep things organised so I know which variety is where, so I work through them one variety at a time to avoid mislabelling anything later. I take everything out of the box that has been my propagator during germination, rearrange the seedlings in the order I want to handle them, and prepare five pots at a time.
I only put a little soil in to begin with, roughly halfway up the pot, and I keep a spoon to hand to help me lift the seedlings. The first variety I pricked out was Sungold, which gave me a lovely five out of five.
The golden rule is that you never hold a seedling by the stem. They are so fragile at this point that it is unbelievable how easily they break. What I do is slide two fingers into the soil between the seedlings, without really touching the plants at all, then flip the whole pot upside down and gently squeeze it so the clump comes out in one piece. Just be careful not to knock the seedlings against anything on your table.
From there I tease the soil apart very gently, always holding the clump of compost rather than the stems or leaves, which in my view is the safest way to do it. If a seedling comes out with a good clump of soil around its roots, I try to save as much of that as I can. Young tomato roots really do not like being left bare and exposed to dryness, so I would never just shake all the soil off to get to the naked root, and I would not leave them sitting around before potting them on.
With tomatoes you can bury them as deep as you like, right up to the point where the first leaves come out. The stem has the wonderful ability to release roots all along its length, so burying it fixes the legginess and gives the plant a much stronger root system. Instead of relying on that one little root it has grown so far, it will spread roots like a crazy monkey.
As I add more compost I push it down gently, but the important thing is to protect the stem while you do it. It is so easy to drop a clump of compost straight onto the seedling and snap it, or to press on the stem as you firm things in. That is exactly why I like the compost fine and sieved for this job.
By the end I had every seedling potted up, and I managed not to destroy a single one, though it was close. I dropped one along the way, but it survived just fine. I would love to know how your germination has gone this season and how many of your seeds turned into seedlings. And if you have any tips for handling these fragile young tomatoes, do share them in the comments, especially for anyone just starting out on their growing adventure. I hope you enjoyed pottering along with me, and I will see you in the next one.
Tags: #TomatoSeedlings #PottingUp #GrowingTomatoes #SeedSowing #BeginnerGardener #MyWindyGarden