Many of my seedlings in the Express 18 cells are hard to remove. I have to really pull on the stems to get them out. Any suggestions in handling future crops?

Determining the optimum time to remove seedlings from containers will vary season to season and at your location versus another grower. Remember, it is always better to remove seedlings early, even if this means a small amount of mix falls away, versus leaving the plants too long. The plants were difficult to remove as a result of two factors: 1. They ran out of space for additional root growth. There are sequential flushes of roots as root tips are air-pruned and secondary roots are produced. With the production of the third flush of branch roots, there is little additional space for these new roots to exploit, so they fill any remaining small voids. 2. As the seedling grows on top, so do the roots, both in numbers as a result of air-pruning, but also roots grow in diameter. It is primarily the increase in diameter of the roots that puts pressure on the sidewall of the container and makes removal more difficult. In the future, consider transplanting seedlings just as the root ball can be easily removed and into a container large enough to support additional root growth for the rest of the growing season if space and overwintering are factors or into the next step up in container size relative to your production goals. Think of transplanting like driving a truck—- If you make timely transplants, you keep the plant growing, what I call “full throttle”. On the other hand, if you leave the plants too long and they approach or come to a full stop, it takes considerable time and wasted energy to get growth rolling again.