In a PINCH!

 Hello my fellow green thumbs! (and prospective green thumbs!). Sorry I skipped a week or two of posting. My seedlings grew and I've transplanted most of them into pots, and now they've grown even more!

 I had a little helper, which was fun. He helped me massage the water into the soil (I always water the dirt not the transplants. This gives everything an even watering, and ensures that there's actually the right amount of dirt in the pots... no shrinking of dirt!

 I always marvel at just how much more room the plants take up after transplanting! But the reality is, as inconvenient as the larger space is, the plants grow so much better and bigger as a result.

 Here is a prime example of just how much bigger the plants get... add about an extra 1/2 to that realistically, as I ended up just pulling out the cosmos. They were already so big and I decided I don't have enough space for them, once I factor in tomatoes and peppers.  Its a LOT more space, and that's just the first transplant...

MOVING ON!! :)

Today I wanted to talk about pinching seedlings! :)  It's a love-hate thing... It kinda hurts inside to prune a tiny seedling, because youre so proud of it's growth... but the reality is, it'll grow into a much fuller, more productive plant, if you train it to be a little bit more bushy... here's how it works...

remember the disney movie Herculese, when he's fighting the dragon? What happens when he slices off the dragon's head?

It grew 3 more heads in the same place! What happened when he cut off those heads?

Lets just say, it wasn't pretty... haha!

Well, it's honestly the same principle with pruning your plants! You want to cut off their heads, and instead of just one head, it'll grow 2 new ones! So when you do this near the beginning of the plant's life, you end up with a "double plant" so to speak... instead of growing itself in one spike in one pattern, it will grow itself in two spikes in two patterns... if you prune again later, then it'll again produce two branches instead of one at that intersection!

Here... let me explain using Penny the Pointlessly Protected house plant...
Here's penny a few weeks ago when I chopped off her head...

And here's Penny today

Do you see them? do you see right below the cut-line, how the plant has adapted to it's horrors? instead of just deciding to be done growing, it grows twice as well... Penny is now growing into a two-headed pointlessly protected house plant! :)

Here's another example... My avocado seed! (this one was a tough one to pinch...)

Here she is after I pinched off her beautiful big upper leaves.... Sigh!

And here she is now! (ignore the fact that the original 3 leaves have all gotten horribly sunburnt from me having her too close to a hotter bulb).  She's got a full two stems with 3-4 leaves each! I will pinch her again once each head makes a second set of leaves. Avocados are notoriously leggy and sparse. So it'll need a lot of TLC.

WHAT TOOLS DO YOU USE KRYSTA?! THIS IS AMAZING!
This is the part where other bloggers reccomend an expensive product to you, and someone pays them to endorse said product...

Some people like to use tools, but honestly...

I prefer to simply use my fingers! I have a good reason for it... with such small seedlings, scissors or shears are just too big. you can accidentally snip off more than you plan to. And if you have a seedling with NO leaves, chances are it will die because it cant photosynthesize light. It needs some solar panels! :)

So today I pinched a few different plants. Here's my Marigold's before pinching (above) and after (below)

It's not a huge difference in the appearance yet... maybe I could've pinched more, who knows! (I guess a master-gardener might know...)

First, make sure your plant has enough leaves that you can actually pinch a significant portion without ruining the plant. I like to wait for the third set of "true" leaves (not the initial seed leaves, but the properly shaped leaves) to be out and established. Find that third set, and plant your fingernails on the stem beneath their leaves... you're not just giving the leaves a hair cut, you're removing the joint that attaches them to the stem.

above you can see I removed the entire leaves, but missed the base part of the stem where they are attached. I went in a second time and squeezed off that little joint part.

there. Now the only joint you can see is the one between the second set of true leaves. you can also see the iddy bitty baby leaves inside that joint. If I didn't pinch it, those leaves would remain tiny... But now that i've pinched it, those will grow into full sized leaves, and branch out each into their own chunk of a plant.

Thyme, basil and oregano... herbs and things that grow in clusters... They are a bit simpler. Wait till there's several sets of leaves, and just go in with a scissors and give the entire thing a chop.

 There's still plenty of leaves for the plants to photosynthesize, and weaker sprouts may die off (which we want) and the bush should get bushier instead of taller! :)

 Plus now I have a bit of thyme to cook with!

The alyssum was a little trickier... mainly  cause it's not totally ready to be pruned... so I just went in and pinched bigger sprouts, in the same way I did the marigolds.

Again, directly at the base of the stem you can see little points where baby leaf buds are waiting and ready to grow if they need to! My guess is that this is God's built in defenses against hungry wildlife having a meal at the first signs of spring.

in other news, the petunias and snapdragons that I seeded have sprouted! So there will be more transplanting and pruning in the weeks to come! I'm trying to hold off on tomato plants for a month yet, so they don't get too unruly.

Well, that's it for now folks, thanks for reading! Happy pinching!