Hello, welcome to GardenWeb! You live in a perfect place to grow tomatoes.

You asked, "should I be growing each of these plants in its own large container outside?"

The answer is yes. Minimum 10 gallon containers (40 liters), or in the ground. But as Dave said, you should first transplant them to an individual small pot, about 4" and let them grow a month or so before putting them in a large pot.

I am pretty sure you started many, many more tomato plants than you really wanted. Each one of those plants can grow to 6 feet or more and produce hundreds of tomatoes. Next year, just plant a few seeds.

Are they outside right now? If not, start putting them outside in the shade for 1 hour, the next day 2 hours, etc. Slowly work up to direct sunlight.

Perhaps you can give some to friends?

Jenn

I am sure you will get plenty of viable seedlings out of all those.
Just scoop some out and transplant one in a 12-16 oz drink cups.
Make sure to cut drain holes first. JMO

Sey

Digdirt2: I bough a packet for less than 1€ or 2€ and there were a tiny bit of seeds at the bottom of the packet, so I just sprinkled them into that plastic container after adding bags of soil into it. 2 days later all the seedlings appeared. The packet just say just sprinkle into a container. Not good info on the packet. I did not want that many plants, but I thought not all will germinate. I did sprinkle such packet before into the rough soil outside and they germinated here and there, but I had to dump soil over them in order to plant bananas and oranges later, so that spot was destroyed.

Wormgirl: Thanks, I will. Right now I dumped most of the seedlings with their soil next to the stone wall onto the stoney ground in long rows leaning to the wall and ground. I will plant some of the remaining ones into small cups as well. Thanks very much for the advise. I have nursery cups with holes in them, all kinds of, but good potting soil is hard to come by here. Or it is extremely expensive. So I am making my own compost from food remains, but that will take years. The soil in the photo is from supermarker at 1€ per smallish bag and is probably not the best potting soil and even that one is not available in big quantity.

I bought a few trucks of local soil, but it is a poor soil, light brown with many stones in it, some tiles, weeds, lots of new grass in it. 10€ per cubic metre plus delivery. On a small island the shopping kind of sucks.

Giving away to friends, everyone has their own garden here. I am new here, they are not :-) They give me lemons, oranges sometimes. I dumped a lot of these seeds into the stoney ground soil all around my place to see what will come up. Will take time and lots of money to slowly make space for garden and fill up soil by trucks. Now you know my situation. Lack of potting soil and lack of gardening space. We are now getting 22-24C with (16)19-20C at night, but never hot or freezing cold. I noticed that during "winter" tomatoes don't grow here because most of the time it is 10C to 13C (50-55F) night and day, with only occasional 16-18C.

I will now hunt for more potting soil to fill up one 40L container for one single tomato plant.

Separating the little seedlings can be done if you are very gentle with them, but if you are nervous about pulling them apart, you could dig out group of seedlings, plant them in a bigger container, and simply cut off all but one of the seedlings. That way, it will have a good chance of surviving and the others will be killed. Don't forget to water well and to put the transplanted seedlings in the shade for a day. If you don't have a shady spot, just put something beside the container to cast a shadow over it.

Good luck!

Linda

Pico, sorry to hear it's hard to get good soil for pots on the island. I agree it's a great idea to make compost and try and improve your soil in the garden.

I think you will be very happy with one big tomato plant and it will provide you many cherry tomatoes for salad!

There is a tomato called Neves Azorean Red that is supposed to be one of the best tomatoes there is. It was said to be native to the Azores. So you are growing tomatoes in a legendary place!

Jenn

I wouldn't even try to separate them. I'd just slice out a size of that mix appropriate for the container you are going to use... transplant... then, with scissors, snip away at the base until you have one per container. During the transplant, allow some of that mix fall away, and as others have said, use a medium that fits your circumstance.

Yes, Azores is amazing place with amazing climate and unbelievably beautiful views that I never get tired of, especially good climate to north Europeans. I miss the Centigrade 30s though as I used to love 32C or 90F very much, but not at night. This is excellent sleeping climate here. I am amazed here I don't use neither heating nor air conditioning, just
put a sweater on in "winter" on some nights and take it off during
summer.

You're all helped me tremendously and I just made 6 small pots with one cherry tomato plant in it for growing. Now I suppose I should have some tomatoes in 3 months from now.

Separating the tiny seedlings was very easy. They are still too small to be entagled. I am used to grow palm tree seedlings and now I grow them here, but germinating palm tree seeds is not easy here as it is not hot enough, but I came up with ideas and waiting for the results, with some easy-to-germinate palms (Washingtonia filiferas) already germinated.

Thanks for suggesting Neves Azorean Red, I will try to find them, unless I already bought them, unmarked.

Once the tomatoes outgrow the half gallon pots they are in, I will probably skip the 10 gallon pots and just plant them into the ground, to avoid hunting for huge amount of potting soil bags. But I will try making one 10G pot, I think. In fact, most of my pots contain mostly stoney ground soil with some potting soil from bags topped on top. Even that potting soil is not perfect, with some mulch-like woods etc. that are not exactly aged.

Welcome to visit the Azores, you won't be disappointed. It has a very good aura (spirit) and people are pure. Any time of the year is fine, but summer is somehow warmer (65F to 78F but an occasional 80F in July and August). They call it European Hawaii for a good reason. There are direct flights from Boston, which takes 4 hours. Lisbon to Azores is a 2 hour flight.