Repotting my peppers

We made a trip across to Home Depot earlier this week and bought some exciting things (including some great paint!), and one of the things we picked up was some potting soil that was marked down. The soil was really for some tree re-potting that I will share with you later, but since I knew there would be lots extra, I figured my new starts could use an upgrade from their egg cartons to small pots so they had lots of room to grow good roots.

Last night after Little M went to bed and before Private Practice was on at its earlier-than-normal time (one of the few TV shows I love & watch consistently) I sat down on the sunporch and started playing in the dirt. I mean, I started re-potting my pepper seedlings. During a phone conversation with my mom earlier in the day, when I bragged about my cute little pepper seedlings, she mentioned to be careful not to let them get pot-bound at all, because apparently when pepper plants slow their growth down, it takes them a long time to ramp their growth back up.

I didn't think my seedlings were getting near the capacity of their little egg carton spots, but I figured I might as well transplant them into larger pots since I had some spare time and already had my potting stuff out. Well I tell you, I was pretty surprised when I popped one out to see that the main root was down hitting the bottom of the egg carton!

I transplanted 4 of my orange banana-type peppers last night and will do the chocolate bell peppers this weekend when they are all up, they are being a little slower at putting their heads towards the light so I'm going to let them get a little better established before I uproot them.

Even though the egg cartons weren't big enough to last for very long, I am loving how easy it is to pop the little plants out - I just stick my thumbs down below and pop them out:

Here is what the little pepper plants look like now - don't they look teensy & cute in those 'big' pots!