Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey there,

I have some tomato seedlings growing in 3 inch net pots. I want to transplant them to my outdoor 5 gallon dutch bucket system that I've built for this summer. However the plants have grown more than I expected and I'm worried about damaging their roots during transplant.

I was thinking of trying to cut out the net pot around the roots, but I don't think that's really feasible.

I thought maybe if I dangled the whole 3 inch net pot in water I could slowly try to pull the roots through the holes and try not to damage them too much

Or maybe I could just leave them in the 3 inch pots and just put the whole thing into the bigger net pot. But I'm not sure if that would restrict root growth too much since the holes in the small pot are very small.

Maybe the plants could recover easily even if they end up losing quite a lot of roots? They seem to have an excess!

Any thoughts? Thanks!

do a test with 2 plants
leave one in the netpot and try to remove one - after a day see if the one you removed is wilting?

I don't think it matters too much if they are restricted - roots are amazing things - picture of the pot?