Finally, the young ‘chokes are gaining their first set of true leaves… still appearing little and harmless! However, it is critical at this point to move them into their own pots before their young roots reach out to the edges of the blocks of soil they were planted in (besides, we wouldn’t want them to eat each other or use their new-found teeth on anyone else for any reason).
Each artichoke is carefully lifted out of the original growing area with a specially sized pair of tongs. Pots are filled with soil and a little hole left in the middle. The tongs are used to push the young plant into the new pot and the soil in gently smoothed around it. As a result the little guys have more room to grow and they take up a lot more space on the planting bench!
I leave you with a close up image of a young artichoke that clearly shows the first two leaves emerging with their attached baby teeth. Stay tuned as we hope to bring you more news from the planting bench on bigger leaves and truly impressive young adult artichoke teeth in the comming weeks!