Right on, Dan! Good work. I'm kinda shocked though. You separated them and planted them together again? Now you're gonna have to separate them again later. Seems like a lot of extra work and potential root disturbance. Anyways, keep at it, they look good.

Thanks!

Yeah... But they're a lot farther apart this time.

Ultimately these guys are going into 4 gallon buckets. I was going to buy them 4" peat pots as a mid-step.

But I don't have a good place for those in front (my wife has definite ideas about what the front of our house should look like ), the dogs mess with everything in back and both side yards are in the shade for 1/2 of the day...

If they end up surviving the hell I put them through a couple days ago, I suspect they will be fine next time too.

I had kind of expected a tomato-like root system with some sort of primary root. Instead, as soon as the plant was under the ground, it split up into a thousand tiny hair-like roots that went everywhere. My separation operation mostly consisted of ripping roots willy-nily until the plants were free of one another.