I shouldn't have done this...

[AnnaIkona]

Alright, this year I made a horrible, horrible mistake.
I ran out of plastic flower pots like these...

mhDkOS1NmFIFz-rUlGi8axg.jpg (8.14 KiB) Viewed 946 times

So, I decided: "hey, why buy new ones if I have tons of tin cans like these in my garage?!.."

And so I planted half of all my teeny, weeny, seedlings in empty tin cans. And then, after about 2 weeks, when I am thinking of planting them outside in the dirt now, I realized: "How am I gonna take 'em out?"
Tin cans are not like flower transplant pots, you can't just squish them and all the soil will come out.

So, now I'm gonna have to pull out the seedlings with no soil around the roots. Oh well, at least the other half of all the seedlings are in plastic water bottles.

Every one makes mistakes, right?

[gumbo2176]

You can try squeezing the sides of the cans enough to loosen the soil in them. Those cans are not all that hard to squeeze and I'd do it in 2 places, 90 degrees apart from each other.

Worse comes to worse, cut the bottom of the can out and slide out the soil.

[applestar]

I think you should be able to cut the rim off with heavy duty tin snips.

[Lindsaylew82]

I second the tin snips!

[rainbowgardener]

did you put holes in the bottoms of your tin cans?

[jal_ut]

Ever heard of "Tin Snips" ?

[Gary350]

Cut the bottom of the can off then plant the whole can roots will grow out of the bottom.

[Allyn]

Can opener.....hold the can and get someone to 'open' the bottom of the can with a can opener -- probably one of the manual ones or you can spin your seedling around on an electric one. Then plant it....yeah, like Gary said.

And/or use tin snips to cut down the side and peel the can off.

[kinipela]

have you tried opening the bottom with those can openers that open the sides of the can instead of the centers? The ones that make it so you cant cut your fingers and does not leave a lip on the end

[imafan26]

If the seedling has a good root ball sometimes you can get lucky with a few good whacks you can loosen the soil enough around the can to pull the plant out mostly intact.

I usually don't use a lipped can. Fruit gallons, ketchup tins that you open with a canopener are easier to get plants out of than cans with a pull top.

[AnnaIkona]

ThanK you everyone for your responses and suggestions. I have used a manual can opener for some and for others I just squeezed 'em out by hand. (Which was hard because these tin cans aren't the normal ones for canning food but actually used for something that has to do with machines, so they were really thick).

But I managed to do it! Although not all the soil came out, the magority of the roots came out just fine. We'll see in a couple of days how they'll look