The general advice is, don't.
Which turns out to be pretty accurate.

Due to logistics I didn't have a final location (big pot) for a couple of
store bought courgette plants, so I potted them on in intermediate sized
pots.

When I had my big pots ready I potted them on.
First one went swimmingly.
I thought the second one was fine, but then the plant fell over showing
just a few short threads of root.
It had apparently come adrift from the rest of the root ball.

As an experiment I cut off all the leaves and developing courgettes
leaving just the buds, and pushed it into the soil.
I then covered it with a large plant pot to give it a moist environment
and plenty of shade.

Amazingly it still seems to be growing.
The first new big leaf is emerging and I have uncovered it.
An interesting experiment, but a waste of time with regards to getting an
early start on the courgettes.

I now have a seedling courgette starting to emerge in the big pot (planted
three seeds when starting the rescue attempt).
I may allow both to grow just for the interest, to see how they get on
with each other.
If another courgette germinates I will probably move it to yet another
large pot.


Cheers



Dave R

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In article ,
David wrote:
The general advice is, don't.
Which turns out to be pretty accurate.

Well, I do, have done for years, and it works well. Yes, they are
fragile, but so are many plants.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 08/06/2020 22:14, Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
David wrote:
The general advice is, don't.
Which turns out to be pretty accurate.

Well, I do, have done for years, and it works well. Yes, they are
fragile, but so are many plants.

+1

The stems are a bit brittle but they usually survive OK unless the slugs
find them immediately after planting. I always put slug bait down around
mine after planting. One year they became slug food overnight. I presume
the slugs all homed in on the bruised stem smell or something.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

The stems are a bit brittle but they usually survive OK unless the slugs
find them immediately after planting. I always put slug bait down around
mine after planting. One year they became slug food overnight. I presume
the slugs all homed in on the bruised stem smell or something.

Yes. I grow them in pots until they are large enough to survive that.
Actually, I may have been a bit misleading, in that I pre-germinate
them on damp kitchen roll and pot them as soon as they show some root.
I don't plant them in trays - it's pointless, given I need only a few
and the seeds are large.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On Tue, 09 Jun 2020 10:41:55 +0000, Nick Maclaren wrote:

In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

The stems are a bit brittle but they usually survive OK unless the slugs
find them immediately after planting. I always put slug bait down around
mine after planting. One year they became slug food overnight. I presume
the slugs all homed in on the bruised stem smell or something.

Yes. I grow them in pots until they are large enough to survive that.
Actually, I may have been a bit misleading, in that I pre-germinate them
on damp kitchen roll and pot them as soon as they show some root.
I don't plant them in trays - it's pointless, given I need only a few
and the seeds are large.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Not sure we are talking about the same size at transplanting.

I would normally expect to plant on when both seed leaves are large, and
the true leaves are starting to grow.

Much the size that you buy from garden centres.
3" pot or smaller.

I was transplanting when there were the first fruits medium grown, several
large true leaves and from a pot around 10" diameter but fairly shallow,
with the root ball filling the pot.

So there was a lot of heavy superstructure on the plants.


Cheers


Dave R


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On 09/06/2020 11:41, Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

The stems are a bit brittle but they usually survive OK unless the slugs
find them immediately after planting. I always put slug bait down around
mine after planting. One year they became slug food overnight. I presume
the slugs all homed in on the bruised stem smell or something.

Yes. I grow them in pots until they are large enough to survive that.
Actually, I may have been a bit misleading, in that I pre-germinate
them on damp kitchen roll and pot them as soon as they show some root.
I don't plant them in trays - it's pointless, given I need only a few
and the seeds are large.

I generally grow mine and other things that don't like root disturbance
in wood pulp biodegradable pots that the roots come through easily. That
or a newspaper origami box which once it gets wet is almost as good.

It is also a cunning way to do lazy self root pruning Bonsai.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

In article ,
David wrote:


Not sure we are talking about the same size at transplanting.

I would normally expect to plant on when both seed leaves are large, and
the true leaves are starting to grow.

Much the size that you buy from garden centres.
3" pot or smaller.

That's a bit earlier than I pot them on from 3" pots to (say) 5".

I was transplanting when there were the first fruits medium grown, several
large true leaves and from a pot around 10" diameter but fairly shallow,
with the root ball filling the pot.

I did that a lot, because the constraint on planting out was on clearing
and preparing the ground. This year, I planted after they had reached
the bottom of 5" pots.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.