Seedling Experiment - Round 2

Considering our miserably wet week, I'm thankful to have my little garden of seedlings to play with on a soggy Saturday morning.  After our first seedling experiment which pitted plastic trays against Corningware casseroles (spoiler alert, casserole won!), we switched tactics.  Hubby was pretty curious about how those little magically expanding peat pellets would perform against starter mix.  We had read in at least one pepper book that peppers don't dig peat (testing that next) so we tried it out some tomatoes.
The results were pretty drastic. Here's some seedlings that were started on March 14th.  The front row is all Oregon Spring tomatoes. See the peat one on the left is huge! I had to repot the peat seedlings this morning.  The same variety on the right is respectable and healthy, but half the size.  Yogurt anyone?

Bob in a party hat, he watched on with cool detachment

 Post repotting comparison

We have been hearing good things about Coir, which is a more sustainable medium than peat.  If we can get our hands on some we'll run another test.  A couple of interesting notes. About 1 out of every 5 seeds don't make it.  Since we're hoping to have 2 of each of the varieties of tomatoes and peppers that we start and have 2 to give away, we start 5 of each variety.

Crossing fingers for dryer days,

Amanda