Garden Bears' World - Potting Up with Hanley Bear

Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here, showing you how to pot up your seedlings so they grow into nice, healthy plants.  I love curry and other spicy food, so I've been growing chillies.  All but one of the seeds I planted have germinated, so I've got twenty-nine baby plants!

Human guardian Polar and I went out to the greenhouse and, while she brought in a big bag of compost, I gathered up some pots and checked they were clean.  Then I laid out some supermarket yogurt pot trays for them to stand in. 

Resting the compost carefully on her finger-tips, and careful not to squash the seedlings, Polar tipped the first tray up, so I could see how much root my seedlings had made.  They she rested a cardboard box on top and turned them back the right way up.

'We have to carefully separate the plants now,' she said.  'Try not to damage the roots and don't hold them by the stems.'

I found a piece of stiff wire I could use to ease them apart, while Polar filled some pots with compost and used her finger to make a planting hole in the middle.

I carefully lifted the first chilli plant by its seed-leaves and lowered it into the pot, them pressed the compost in snuggly around it with my paws.

The pots were too heavy for a small bear to carry to their trays, so Polar put them on the shelf for me.  Soon, we had potted up all of the first variety and could get to work on the second tray.

I had to jump down from the shelf before Polar watered them all!

Then it was Sonning's turn to pot up his sweet peppers.  You might remember that he had two packets of seed - a very old packet and a packet of fresh seeds.  If they had all grown, there would have been forty plants, but only the newer seeds germinated.

Sonning still had twenty peppers, so he and Polar got busy potting them up, putting them on a different shelf to my chillies so we don't muddle them up.

We will look after them in the greenhouse at home for now.  When they are bigger, we will take some to the allotments for our pals down there, but keep plenty for growing ourselves.  I hope I get loads of chillies, so I can give some to our friend Mrs Shug, who makes the delicious Indian food at Stoke market, but I must remember to always wash my paws after touching chillies.

Polar says us bears must wash our paws regularly to stay safe anyway, so that's what I'm off to do now.  T'ra, everyone!