Transplanting

Over spring break, mom and I transplanted tomato plants. Earlier in the spring, mom planted them in baking pans and grew them under a fluorescent light in the cellar. In about a month, it’s time to transplant them from the baking pans to their own little Highland milk pints where they will live until they are big enough to go into the garden in the backyard. This year there were only 23 to transplant – one spring, we raised nearly 200.

Baby tomato plants. These stringy plants wouldn't last long in the Kansas wind, would they?

Transplanting is not a happy time in the life of a tomato plant. You cut up its root system with the sharp spoon you use to dig it out of its baking pan environment and drop it into a paper pint, adding more soil. If you don’t water it within several minutes, the plant wilts because it is stressed.

However, transplanting gives tomato plants more earth for their roots to expand in and strengthens them. Sometimes, tomato plants are transplanted three or four times before going outside so they will be strong enough to withstand the Kansas wind.

Baby tomato plants living inside milk pints.

The reason the plants’ roots were torn up in the transplanting process was so they could eventually go outside and produce tomatoes. When it seems like our roots are being cut out of the comfortable soil around us, it is because God is transplanting us into a place where we can become stronger and bear more fruit for Him.