I think you can move the tiny impatience. I don't think the lack of rooting space will hurt for a little while, but they do need drainage so be careful watering. They will rot when it is warm and damp; a small fast draining pot would be good for them.

Some flower seed is slow to come up. I do think vinca would like heat. Don't give up on them.

I have grown bee balm that was about 2 or 3 feet tall, but I have seen it in a yard very tall. There is also a petite one so you have to know which variety you have.

Linaria has a flower like a small snapdragon, but it is wispy plant slender plant. I usually plant them too close, they are delicate and thin with small flowers.

Here is a link that might be useful: images of linaria

As long as you don't get that 1.5" of soil too damp, your impatiens should be fine for at least a couple weeks. That is unless they are very crowded. You will want to move them either into a pot with drainage or into the ground. They are such tender little stems that I would want to wait to move them until I could handle them by their leaves. I don't know anything about the others though.

There is a method that the winter sown people use. They stick something under little groups of plants and transplant them in small clumps. I forget what they call it but they use it on things like poppies that don't transplant well. Impatients transplants pretty easily though.

Ok, thank you!

Vinca really, really likes warm conditions in order to sprout. You probably just need to exercise a little patience with them. They'll sprout in a week or two if the soil-less growing mix is kept at 65-70 degrees. If it is colder, it will take them a lot longer to sprout.

With the lemon balm, mine get really huge by mid-summer---likely about 2' tall and 3' wide. I tend to plant them in a corner of a raised bed so they can overflow into the pathway. I cut them back relentlessly and they don't mind it at all.

I use lemon balm (which is a perennial and will come back reliably if grown in well-drained soil) as a grasshopper indicator plant. If I watch my lemon balm plants, I'll know exactly when the grasshoppers begin hatching because suddenly they'll be all over the lemon balm eating holes in the leaves. When I see them, I sprinkle Nolo Bait or Semaspore all over the plant. It is an organic grasshopper control that only works when the hoppers are really small--between about 1/4-1/2". Before I started growing lemon balm, I never knew when the hoppers were first starting to emerge. Now, the lemon balm rats them out every year which gives me a chance to kill them before they get too big for the Nosema locuste to kill them.

Be careful about letting the lemon balm go to seed in your garden, or you'll have a million lemon balm plants next year.

Helen, I believe you're talking about winter sowing HOS (Hunks of Seedlings)?

Thanks Dawn, I'm going to be very patient with the Vinca. Hopefully the heat mat will help. Good to know about the lemon balm, I'll keep my eye out, although grasshoppers haven't been a real problem for me.. Yet?..
Helen, I'll check out the winter sow forum, thanks!

I plant petunia seeds too close and sometimes use popsicle sticks for labels. You can lift little bunches of seedlings with a little stick when they are very young and spread them out to separate cups.

Here is a link that might be useful: winter sown idea

I don't know what kinds of Impatiens you planted, regular Impatiens walleriana species and hybrids, SunPatiens, or New Guinea Impatiens. If you planted SunPatiens or New Guinea, you should be okay, but there is a disease issue with regular Impatiens and many nurseries have ceased carrying them for the time being. I am attaching an article FYI.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Impatients walleriana downy midew disease

Shoot, I threw the package away. I have no idea what kind of impatiens I have going. Maybe I can swing by the store I purchased them from. They only sold one kind. I'll be sure to check, thank you!

According to Susan's link the disease doesn't affect other plants and it needs humid cool weather to grow. I would just watch for mildew and pull the plants if they look sick.

Regular impatiens are in all the stores down here now. I don't remember seeing them all that much in the stores last year and think that, as Susan mentioned, a lot of the stores avoided them last year in order to try to stop the spread of the mildew disease that has been wiping out impatiens plantings in some parts of the country. I've never seen it here---maybe we are too dry for it to thrive. I think the stores have caved in to pressure because people wanted their impatiens, because the impatiens were in the stores even before the marigolds were.