Crammed Canterbury Bell Seedlings!

At long last, I've decided to return to my winter sown canterbury bells.  They've been sitting securely in their little milk jug containers for about two months now, and it's getting warmer.

I opened my container, fighting with the gorilla tape I secured it with, as well as the additional clear tape I used to re-secure the pieces after the wind sent the top portion flying.  The seedlings were crammed together, with very little space between them at all.  I had actually thinned them out previously, but due to re-sprouting, the huge supply of seedlings was overwhelming.

Originally they had been placed in well thought out spots within the milk jug, but after the three days of rain that flooded the container, I imagine the seeds distributed themselves throughout the entire jug, thereby allowing more of them to take root than normally would. I did, after all, have a hard time managing the amount of seeds that were placed in each area, owing to the fact that the seeds are so tiny!

Sadly, the seedlings within the container were growing at such a slow rate that I was afraid of destroying them if I began thinning the area out.  With this in mind, I decided to go about a slower process of management.  I prepared one of the planters in the front yard, and broke the soil holding the seedlings into two different sections.  I wanted as many of them to survive as possible, so the seedlings were transplanted into two different areas of the planter.

As you can see, the soil didn't break into sections that were even remotely even, but I didn't want to press my luck by breaking the larger piece in half.  I left them as is.

This is merely step one of the thinning process.  I expect a few of the seedlings to die off on their own in the next few days, just because of the stress they went through during transplant, so after the seedlings have time to get used to their new environment I'll thin the seeds out a bit more.

Then, I'll need to wait for the seedlings to get a bit larger, and thin them yet again.  I'd rather go about this process all at once, but I worry about the strength of the seedlings...

Mainly because they shouldn't be seedlings right now.  They should be a bit taller than they are, with a few more leaves attached.  I imagine this is because of how crammed together the little guys were when I opened the container, as well as the fact that this was an extremely mild winter.  That had to have had an effect on them.

So now I wait.

I did decide to leave half of the milk jug covering one of the transplant sections, just in case of frost - there's still a danger of it happening, after all.

Yeah, I realize that it doesn't have manicured, perfect beauty to it, but then again, I don't want perfection.  I want discovery.  I left the who-knows-what-it-is plant in between the transplants for just that reason.  This could be a good idea, bringing contrast to the garden, or it could be a bad idea, having a root structure that crowds out the canterbury bells.

Only time will tell, and I'll be happy to see the results!